When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time in the hospital because of cystic fibrosis. Long sleepless nights, loads of needle pokes, and a constant flow of nurses and respiratory therapists coming in at all hours became normal. What wasn’t normal — or at least what hurt the most — was being there without my parents. Not always, but without my brothers or mom and dad constantly there, it felt lonely. I found it exhausting to constantly fight the lie that I was rejected. As a child, I desperately wanted to be understood in my struggle. I wanted someone to “get it.” But what I eventually realized was that wanting to feel understood by others was an unreasonable expectation.
No one can fully understand the details of someone else’s struggle — not the exhaustion, the pain, or the hidden fears that come with it. People can, however, relate to the feelings that come from those struggles — fear, loneliness, disappointment, isolation, rejection — the deep place in our souls where real connection happens. My need to be understood had less to do with healing and more to do with comparison. I wanted others to understand me by comparing their pain to mine. But comparison was not connection. And it definitely was not grace.
Growing up taught me that struggles are the very means by which God builds our faith. They’re the growing pains of spiritual maturity. But how we walk through them determines what kind of growth we experience.
If we walk through pain without the Holy Spirit, we inevitably walk with the enemy — because he’s always ready to interpret our pain for us. He’ll use disappointment, bitterness, and comparison to turn our eyes inward. We begin focusing on what we’ve lost or what others seem to have, and before long, discouragement defines us — the very thing we are struggling with becomes our identity.
But when we walk through pain with the Holy Spirit, something radically different happens. It doesn’t make the pain go away, but it does change our perspective. The focus shifts from what’s been done to us to what God is doing in us. Romans 5.3-5 reveals this reality in that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”
Grace isn’t comparing your suffering to someone else’s — it’s about acknowledging your pain, accepting your limitations, and asking God for strength to keep walking, keep waking up, keep showing up. Paul writes that God’s grace is “made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12.9). That means the Holy Spirit’s power can only meet us right where we stop pretending to be strong.
So, when struggles come — and they will — the question isn’t whether God is working. It’s whether we’re allowing Jesus to walk with us or we’re walking with the enemy and allowing him to define what our pain means rather than Jesus.
Ask the Holy Spirit this week: What do you want to bring out of me through this struggle, and how can I walk with You rather than the enemy?
God bless,
Nathan
