Many if not all, secretly have our doubts on the sovereignty of God especially when it comes to the evil, problems and disasters in the world and particularly in our lives. There are many ways to reason this question.

One view is that he is powerless to help, to intervene, that he cannot do anything to help His children on earth. Many refer to the passion of Christ to back this up when Jesus Christ said “Eli! Eli!, lama sabacthani?” or better known as “My God, my God, why have thou forsaken me?”

Many believe that if God couldn’t help His only son, what more us? However many have forgotten, how, I do not know that, He had to suffer/die to redeem us but Christ’s suffering did not go in vain because on the third day the father raised Jesus from the dead and now is sitting at the right hand of the father.

Another reason to why God permits evil to happen is because God is evil in itself. That He takes joy watching His children suffer here on earth. We know that is not true because of what the Bible says for example in Psalm 103:8 “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, ABOUNDING IN LOVE” and in Psalm 107:1 “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is GOOD; His LOVE endures forever.”

Then what could be the reason? One word, FREEDOM. Most, not all of our suffering is self inflicted, The price we have to pay for freedom to choose between what is right and wrong is continuous suffering and when we choose to do something wrong, obviously we will get punish for it. God promise us that He disciplines those He love hence suffering because of our poor decisions or and judgments. So the question changes from “why do I suffer?” to “why don’t I suffer more” because we know we have done so many things that are wrong.

However some situations are not because of our poor choices or decisions. It is there because God wants it to be there. WHAT? WHY? Because God uses short term sufferings for long term good. We judge situations very prematurely that if we could just wait, we would know what god is trying to accomplish. When we go through a problem, everything in our life begins to fall apart or more bad things keep pilling up in our life and it convinces us that God is up to no good however suffering is a matter of perspective. We need to understand that God wants what is good for us, it is our fallen human nature that wants what is easy even though it’s not the best we can have.

“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. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” Romans 8:28 - 29

There is a saying that states: We never learn anything during the good times. That is somewhat true. It is during those difficult period that God chisels, moulds us into the image of his perfect son ; Jesus Christ.

God’s purpose in our life REQUIRES some discomfort and pain. Here’s an analogy: Imagine you are a house and God went in there to fix some stuffs at first. You know fix some leaks and what not but then He suddenly takes a hammer and begin to hammer down a few stuffs and replacing everything little by little. It hurts, causes discomfort and obviously your not happy with being in pain but when His finishes you see that its not that tiny cottage, the masterpiece is a palace worthy enough even for God himself to live in.

God knows what it feels like to go through sufferings, to be betrayed by love ones, to be backstab by your bestfriends, to be persecuted for doing the rights things or for no reason. He knows and He weeps with us when we weeps, He hurts when we hurt .Don’t believe me that He knows how we feel..? Watch the passion of Christ, attend station of the Cross or I post this before but do read it again slowly and imagine what Christ had to go through.

Reflection on the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ +

The agony in the garden was really the agony in His mind. He suffered the passion in His mind before He suffered it in His body—to the point of actually affecting the latter by sweating blood. But from then on, it was His bodily suffering that affected His mental suffering.

At the base of all His suffering was the one thing that human beings dread the most: rejection. He was betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter and abandoned by all the rest of His Apostles; those He had hand picked as His closest intimates. He was most rejected by those who put Him to death. They not only wanted Him dead, they wanted Him to suffer. They not only considered Him to be worth nothing, they considered Him to be worth minus nothing! This significance was not lost on Him. He felt fully the rejection as each physical agony reminded Him.

So we thank Him for joining us on our human journey and actually choosing to experience what we fear the most.

We thank Him for enduring the arrest and the cruelty of the guards and the Sanhedrin. We thank Him for enduring the cruelty of Pilot who allowed Him to be executed rather than risk his own political ruin—and for the cruelty of Herod who wanted to be entertained by having Him work a miracle. We thank Him for all the time He spent satisfying their preoccupation with themselves, just delaying His ultimate death. We thank Him for the anxiety of that night in a cell.

The next morning He was brutally scourged with such intensity and violence that He became as an aged man in a matter of minutes. His multiple wounds bloodied His entire body. The loss of so much blood not only severely weakened Him; it also caused a severe, throbbing headache that remained with Him for the duration.

We thank Him for this and for the mockery He received when they put a purple cloth on His shoulders and pushed a crown of thorns down into His head which intensified His headache. They blindfolded Him and slapped Him, insisting that He ‘prophesy’ who had hit Him. They spat on Him and beat Him.

He stood at the praetorium in utter disgrace according to the attitude of the crowd—while in reality, He stood in utter glory: almighty God, being present to every person who has ever suffered rejection, joining them in their
moment of pain. It was there that He was sentenced to death by crucifixion. As a further humiliation, He was forced to carry His instrument of execution. He revealed to St. Bernard that carrying the cross was His most painful agony. He was so weak, He could hardly walk. So the weight of the cross on His shoulder was unbearable. It most likely dislocated His shoulder. It is not surprising that He fell down on the stone streets that were filthy with animal dung—with the cross on top of Him. And He got up each time.

It was only with the help of Simon of Cyrene that He made it to the top of Calvary. There they drove the nails into the carpal tunnels of His hands, causing pain throughout His upper body. The nail in His feet registered great pain through all the sensitive nerves there. When the cross was righted, His up-stretched arms squeezed His lungs and He began to pant for lack of oxygen. So He had to push down on His crucified feet to push His body up in order to fill His lungs with air. This took great effort because He was so weak. Yet He managed to maintain such effort for three hours of agony which increased gradually as He became weaker moment by moment.

By the end of the third hour, His agony was at its peak and His self-gift was exquisite. He had come to the point where His strength simply gave out and He suffocated. In this eternal moment as He died, He gave us His life. Transcending time, this moment of divine love is present to us in the tabernacles of the world.

God is in control, God is good all the time, all the time God is good.

- and being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6