I'm not there, but God is.
But I'm Here To Encourge You -- Yes, God Is Real Close!
"It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes" (Psalm 119:71, kjv).
"God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way." ~ C.S. Lewis
"When we walk with God through dark valleys, we become inseparably connected with Him." ~ Chuck Swindoll
There are truths and people that sunlight cannot seem to reach. Their experience is dark but Grace is powerful!
They live in a valley — in the silence after diagnosis, in the wreckage of a relationship, in the long dark night when prayer feels like shouting into an empty room. And yet it is precisely there, in those stripped-down, undeniable moments, that God does some of His most extraordinary work.
He is not indifferent to your pain. He is not distant in your darkness. He is the God who descends close.
Are You At A Low Point in life?:
-Psalm 34:18: "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit".
-Isaiah 41:10: "Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you...".
-2 Corinthians 12:9: "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness".
-Psalm 30:5: "Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning".
-Matthew 11:28: "Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest".
Who has been there - real down, very low?:
Elijah: He experienced severe depression and hopelessness (1 Kings 19).
Job: Lost his family, health, and wealth (Job 1–2).David: Frequently felt lonely, fearful, and pursued by enemies (Psalms).
Jesus: Experienced was low emotionally. He had temptations in the wilderness and experienced intense anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane.
With Jesus You Can Face All Of Life's Low Points and High Points:
With you is God's Presence: Even in the "darkest of depths,"
Yep God is Close rather than distant. Your faith can be transformed during the low points of life, leading you towards spiritual maturity in Jesus with and greater reliance on God.
We Believers Need Christ's Power Daily With His Endurance:
Yes God in the Bible encourages endurance as we draw upon His anointing-grace via His unchanging promises. God is promising that sufferings are temporary and that His restoration will arrive (see 1 Peter 5:10)
Charles Spurgeon, who knew deep grief as a constant companion, wrote: "I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages."
That is not stoicism. That is not mere PMA positive thinking dressed in religious language. I'm a realist who opts to praise the Lord in the middle of this world's mess. I'm not a pessimist. You can be a praying and praising realist in Christ, too. This was from a man (Spurgeon) who had experienced trials. He'd been broken, had been rebuilt, and had been broken again — and who discovered that the breaking was never the end of the story. God used Him long term!
The Classroom You Never Chose
Nobody volunteers for the low points of life. Nobody raises their hand and says, "Sign me up for the trial that will hollow me out before it fills me back up."
But James, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, calls us to something that defies our natural instincts:
"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance" (James 1:2-4, NIV).
Pure joy. Not manufactured optimism. Not denial. Joy — rooted in what you know to be true, not in how you happen to feel on a given Tuesday.
The key word James uses is "know." Tested faith produces perseverance. Perseverance produces character. Character produces hope — the kind of hope Paul describes as an anchor, not a wish (Romans 5:3-4). This is a process, a curriculum, and God is the architect of both.
What!? It was good...that I was afflicted. Really? Man, it just worked out that way cuz I walk in Jesus.
Not good in spite of the affliction Ive felt — good because of it. The affliction was the instrument. The lesson was the goal.
The Desert Was the Classroom
Long before Clive Lewis put his thought into words, God demonstrated it through a nation.
He led Israel into the wilderness — deliberately, purposefully, not because He lost the map. "Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart" (Deuteronomy 8:2, niv).
God wanted to see what was in them. More importantly, He wanted them to see what was in them and change. Forty years of sand, thirst, manna, and complaint — and through all of it, God was teaching the most essential lesson the human soul can learn:
"Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 8:3, NIV).
Comfort trys to teach us to trust in our comfort, but the desert teaches us to trust God.
There is no shortcut to that lesson. It cannot be learned in some PMA seminar. It cannot be downloaded. It is burned into the soul only through the long walk WITH Christ, through the days when the water runs out and the only thing left is God Himself — and you discover, to your astonishment, that He is enough. He is more than enough!
Strength Hidden in Weakness
Paul was a giant — intellectually, theologically, spiritually. He had more credentials than most men dream of, and he learned to count them as loss (Philippians 3:8). But God gave him something else, too: a thorn. Something relentless, unresolved, embarrassing. He prayed three times for its removal.
God said no.
"My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9, NKJV).
This is one of the most countercultural statements in all of Scripture. The world says: eliminate weakness, project strength, curate the image. God says: your weakness is the very space where My power takes up residence. Your insufficiency is the invitation for My sufficiency.
Barna Research has documented what many pastors quietly sense: the believers who demonstrate the deepest, most resilient faith are disproportionately those who have walked through significant suffering. Not because pain is inherently redemptive, but because suffering, submitted to God, strips away the self-reliance that quietly competes with genuine faith. The valley humbles what the mountaintop never could.
Paul did not merely survive his thorn. He boasted in it — because it kept him close to the One whose grace covered it.
Gold Does Not Refine Itself
Job had lost everything — children, wealth, health, reputation. His friends offered theology that was tidy and wrong. And in the rubble of his life, Job said something extraordinary:
"He knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I will come forth as gold" (Job 23:10, NIV).
Job could not see the refiner. He could barely articulate the pain. But he trusted the process because he trusted the Person overseeing it. That is the anatomy of biblical faith — not certainty about outcomes, but confidence in the character of God.
Peter draws the same image with precision: "These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold — though your faith is far more precious than mere gold" (1 Peter 1:7, NLT).
Gold is passive in the furnace. It does not choose the flame. But it comes out of it purified, clarified, more itself than it was before. So does the believer who holds on.
The great hymn writer William Cowper, himself no stranger to the abyss of depression and despair, wrote: "God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm."
That is not a man writing from comfort. That is a man who descended into darkness and found, to his undying wonder, that God was already there.
Why the Valley Cannot Be Skipped
Here is the uncomfortable pastoral truth: there is a kind of spiritual depth that cannot be produced by blessing alone.
It is not that God withholds grace in the valley — He pours it out there with a generosity that often goes unnoticed until later. It is that certain lessons about His faithfulness can only be learned when everything else has been stripped away. You cannot learn that God is enough until He is all you have. You cannot learn what Paul means by contentment until you have sat in a prison cell with nothing but Christ and discovered — to your astonishment — that you are content (Philippians 4:11-13).
The Proverbs remind us that God disciplines those He loves, just as a father corrects the son in whom he delights (Proverbs 3:11-12). Hebrews echoes it: "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it" (Hebrews 12:11, NIV). Later. Trained. Harvest. These are not instantaneous words. They are long-obedience words.
John Piper writes: "God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them." The valley does not mean God has stopped working. It means He is working at a depth you cannot yet perceive.
What the Valley Produces
Paul maps it with surgical clarity in Romans 5:3-4: suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance produces character. Character produces hope. This is not a metaphor. It is a spiritual anatomy of transformation — a chain reaction ignited by trials that, left to our own preferences, we would always avoid.
Perseverance is not the same as stubbornness. It is the muscle that only grows under resistance. Character is not what we project — it is what remains when the projection fails. Hope, in the biblical sense, is not wishful thinking. It is a confident expectation, rooted in the proven faithfulness of God (Romans 5:5).
The valley, then, is not a detour from the life God intended for you. It is a corridor inside it. A necessary corridor. One that leads somewhere the mountaintop never could.
A Word to the One in the Valley Right Now
If you are in it today — if the low point is not a theological concept but your actual address — hear this:
God is not punishing you. He is not absent. He is not surprised. He saw this valley before you were born, and He has already prepared what you will need to walk through it. His grace is not theoretical. It is specific, sustaining, and sufficient — sufficient for this diagnosis, this grief, this failure, this wilderness.
The ancient promise still holds: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28, niv). All things. Not the pleasant things only. Not the things that make sense from where you stand. All things — including this one.
You will not stay in the valley forever. But do not waste it while you are there. Ask God what He is teaching you. Stay close to His Word. Let the pain drive you to prayer rather than away from it. And trust, with the settled conviction of Job, that the One who knows the way you take has not lost His grip on you.
The furnace does not have the final word. The Refiner does.
And He is making you gold.
1) Does God allow low points?
Yes—very clearly.
- “In this world you will have tribulation…” — John 16:33
- “Many are the afflictions of the righteous…” — Psalm 34:19
God does not promise a painless life—He permits hardship, even for His faithful people
2) Does God use those low points for a purpose?
Yes—this is explicit.
- “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God…” — Romans 8:28
You, believer, have been predestined from before the world began. See verse 29. Jesus has called you to Himself, and now you are justified. Sanctification is happening now, see 3:24, and you will be glorified.
The Apostle Paul uses the past tense in the Text for a future event to stress its certainty (cf. vv. 18, 21; 2 Tim. 2:10).
Check the context (Rom. 8:31–39). Paul closes his teaching about the believer’s eternal security in Christ with his crescendo of questions and answers for the different concerns his readers might still have.
What's the result? It's his clear expression of praise to and for God’s grace in bringing salvation to completion for all who are chosen and believe in Jesus—a hymn of security basically.
God is for us believers -- yes, it's well translated like this: “Since God is for us.”
What is Paul’s point here: Would God do any less for any of His children than He did for His enemies? I rejoice that the Father has chosen us in Christ (see verses 29, 30).
"being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;" Phil. 1:6 nkjv
“You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good…” — Genesis 50:20
God doesn’t waste suffering, and we shouldn't do that either—God has redirected it. The Cross of Christ had the greatest purpose.
3) Are we taught things through suffering we wouldn’t learn otherwise?
Yes—this is the closest direct match to Lewis’ idea.
- “It was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn Your statutes.” — Psalm 119:71
- “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word.” — Psalm 119:67
- “Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” — Romans 5:3–4
This is powerful—the psalmist literally says affliction taught him obedience.
4) Does God use hardship as loving discipline?
Yes—this is a central biblical theme.
- “The Lord disciplines the one He loves…” — Hebrews 12:6
- “…He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness.” — Hebrews 12:10
This goes beyond “lessons”—it’s formation into holiness.
5) Even Christ learned through suffering
This is the deepest layer:
- “Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.” — Hebrews 5:8
If even Christ, in His humanity, walked that path—then we should not expect another.
Man, How Can I Put This all Together?
The Bible does not say Lewis’ quote word-for-word—but it teaches something even stronger:
God not only allows suffering—He designs it, governs it, and redeems it to teach, correct, refine, and conform us to Christ in ways prosperity never could.
“God, in His love, allows affliction so that we might learn His ways, be corrected from wandering, and be shaped into holiness—lessons often only suffering can teach.”
If you’d like, I can turn this into a polished sermon illustration or weave in Spurgeon, Wiersbe, or Charles Spurgeon quotes to deepen it even further.
