“God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.”

One of the most common phrases in the “Christianese” language. If you have spent much time around church, you have probably heard that phrase more times than you can count. Maybe you have even said it yourself. I know I have.

And I believe it.

The problem is that maybe sometimes I am much better at remembering that God is good when life is good. When things fall into place, when prayers are answered the way I hoped they would be, when my family is doing well, when work is going smoothly, and when I can see some kind of purpose in what is happening, it is pretty easy to talk about the goodness of God.

But what about the other days?

What about the days when something happens that we did not expect? What about disappointment, loss, conflict, fear, uncertainty, or simply those seasons when nothing seems to be going quite right?

Do we truly acknowledge and remember that God is still good then?

Romans says, “We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

I have read those words so, so many times, but lately I have been thinking about the order.

Suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance produces character. Character produces hope.

I don’t think this scripture is telling us to enjoy suffering. I also don’t believe every difficult thing that happens to us is somehow good. Some things hurt deeply. Some losses leave deep scars. Some prayers are not answered the way we desperately wanted them to be.

But maybe this scripture seems to be telling us that suffering does not have to be wasted. That something can be produced through it. That what suffering produced, matters.

Just like a tree that does not become strong simply because the wind blows against it. It becomes stronger because of the way it responds to that resistance. Movement creates stress within the wood, and over time the tree adapts. Strength develops because something was required of it that calm conditions never would have required.

I think that people are much the same.

We often pray for God to remove the resistance when sometimes He may be using that resistance to develop something in us. I don’t think that it means we should go looking for suffering. Life seems perfectly capable of providing enough of suffering on its own.

But perhaps the question in those difficult seasons should not always be, “God, how quickly can You get me out of this?”

Maybe another question is worth asking. “God, what are You trying to develop in me while I am here?”

I wish I could tell you that is always how I respond. But, it is not.

There are plenty of days when fear gets more of my attention than faith. There are days when I complain about circumstances completely out of my control. There are times when frustration changes the way I engage with people. There have been seasons when I became so focused on what was happening to me that I failed to consider what was happening through me.

And that may be one of the most important lessons in this passage. The struggles we endure do not only affect us.

The people around us experience the person we become while we are going through them. Our spouse experiences it. Our children experience it. Our friends experience it. The people we work beside experience it.

When I lose hope, someone else often feels those consequences.

I can become impatient. Short tempered. Negative. Withdrawn. I can spend so much time looking at what has or might go wrong that I completely miss what God might be doing right in front of me.

Looking back, I think those are the moments that I regret the most. Not necessarily because I was afraid. Fear is part of being human. I regret the times, however, that I allowed my fear to determine my character.

That is why the progression shown in Romans 5 matters so much.

Perseverance is not simply surviving something long enough for it to end. Perseverance is learning how to remain faithful while we are still inside of it. And when we continue doing that, something begins to change. Character develops. Then our character begins producing something even more powerful.

Hope.

Hope is not pretending everything is fine when it is not. It is not convincing ourselves that every circumstance will eventually turn out exactly the way we want.

Hope is deeper than that. Hope is confidence that God is still present when I cannot see what He is doing. Hope is believing that God is still good when the situation is not. Hope is trusting that the chapter I am living in right now is not the entire story.

And when that kind of hope begins taking root inside of us, people notice. When we see God in places where the world sees only fear, we become so much more capable of showing God to the people who are standing in those same places.

Maybe that is one of the greatest purposes of our character. Our character becomes the testimony of our hope.

People may never know everything we have walked through. They may never understand every prayer we prayed or every night we struggled to sleep. But they will experience what those struggles produced in us.

The truth is, every one of us is going to face resistance. We will experience disappointment. We will lose things we wanted to keep. We will walk through situations we would never have chosen.

The question is not whether those moments will come. The question is what they will produce.

And sometimes the greatest evidence of God’s goodness is not when He removed the struggle from our lives, but it is who we became as a result of walking through that struggle.

A Practice to Cultivate

I know what Scripture says. I believe it. And I still struggle to live it out.

Maybe that is a good place for us to begin.

The next time life feels heavy, before immediately asking God to change what is happening around you, take a moment to ask what He may be trying to change within you.

What is this season producing in me?

Is it producing fear, bitterness, impatience, or frustration? Or am I allowing God to use it to develop perseverance, character, and eventually hope?

Then ask one more question.

What are the people around me experiencing from me while I walk through this?

We will not always respond perfectly. I know I do not. But perhaps the practice is simply learning to recognize the moments when fear begins determining our character, and choosing again to trust what we already know to be true.

God is still good. Even here.

‘Well Rooted’ is a new column to the Great Bend Tribune written by Jeremy Elliott. Elliott owns a lawncare business and lives in the Great Bend area.