God Uses Pain to Deliver His People

Few questions cut closer to the bone of real life than this one. How could God possibly deliver me by means of pain? Not from pain, but through it.

That question rises straight out of the book of Job, one of the most emotionally honest and theologically demanding books in all of Scripture. As we walk through Job, we encounter a line spoken by Elihu that feels both troubling and strangely hopeful:

“He delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity” (Job 36:15).

At first glance, it almost sounds cruel. How can affliction be the means of deliverance? How can adversity be a gift that opens rather than destroys? And perhaps most pressing of all how would we even recognize when God is doing this in our own lives?

Scripture does not shy away from these questions. Instead, it presses us to wrestle with them honestly.

Deliverance That Comes Wrapped in Pain

When the Bible speaks about God delivering his people, we often imagine rescue that feels obvious and immediate chains broken, danger removed, relief supplied. But Job 36:15 points to a deeper, more mysterious work. Sometimes God rescues us not by removing suffering, but by using suffering as the instrument of rescue.

In some cases, the connection is clear. An injury reveals a hidden disease. A closed door prevents a devastating choice. A humiliation averts a future catastrophe. These moments remind us that not all pain is pointless. Sometimes what feels like loss is actually preservation.

Scripture is full of these examples. David was humiliated when he was barred from battle, only to discover that the delay saved his family from destruction (1 Samuel 29–30). What looked like rejection became protection. The affliction delivered him from a far greater sorrow.

The psalmist testifies to the same reality:

“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word” (Psalm 119:67).

In other words, affliction severed him from a path that would have ruined him. Pain became a mercy.

Even the apostle Paul describes an experience so severe that it nearly crushed him yet he later says it happened “to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9). God delivered Paul from self-reliance by allowing suffering that stripped away every false support.

Suffering as a Teacher of Truth

One of the hardest truths to accept is that suffering does not merely test what we believe it teaches us what we believe. Martin Luther once argued that suffering is one of the primary tools God uses to shape a faithful understanding of Scripture. Alongside prayer and meditation, he said, trial itself becomes a tutor.

“It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” (Psalm 119:71).

That statement is not theoretical. It is learned in tears.

Studies consistently show that suffering changes how people think about meaning and dependence. According to a 2022 Pew Research survey, over 70% of people who reported enduring a season of serious hardship said it permanently altered their understanding of what matters most in life. Pain has a way of cutting through illusions and forcing us to confront what is solid and what is not.

God often uses adversity to deliver us from shallow faith, borrowed convictions, or secondhand theology. What we once heard about God, we begin to see for ourselves.

What Kinds of Pain Does God Use?

Scripture’s answer is sobering in its breadth every kind short of final destruction.

Paul writes, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed” (2 Corinthians 4:8). That includes emotional anguish, physical weakness, relational loss, injustice, persecution, and even death itself. Isaiah says that sometimes the righteous are taken by death to be delivered from calamity worse than dying (Isaiah 57:1).

This does not mean every pain is easily explained or quickly understood. Nor does it mean suffering is good in itself. The Bible never minimizes pain. But it does insist that no suffering in the hands of a sovereign God is wasted.

Even in the most severe afflictions, God remains purposeful never cruel, never careless, never absent.

Can We Miss What God Is Doing?

Here is perhaps the most unsettling truth of all yes, we can miss it.

Job himself did.

For much of the book, Job believed God had turned against him. He accused God of cruelty and hostility. And in the end, Job repents not because he sinned by grieving, but because he misjudged God’s heart. “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,” Job says, “but now my eye sees you” (Job 42:5).

One of the reasons believers struggle to interpret suffering rightly is simple: many have never been taught a biblical theology of suffering. In a culture that equates blessing with comfort and success, pain feels like proof of abandonment. But Scripture presents a radically different vision one where suffering often becomes the means of intimacy, maturity, and lasting hope.

According to the Barna Group, nearly 60% of practicing Christians say they were never taught how suffering fits into the Christian life. Without that framework, pain feels random, personal, and cruel rather than purposeful, though still painful.

Pain That Opens the Ear

Elihu’s words in Job 36:15 do not promise that suffering will always make sense in the moment. They promise something deeper that God can use adversity to open our ears.

Pain slows us down. It humbles us. It interrupts the noise of self-sufficiency. It presses us to listen to God, to truth, to eternity.

This does not mean we must pretend pain is pleasant. It means we trust that God is present and active even when relief does not come. The same God who wounds is the God who heals. The same God who allows suffering is the God who redeems it.

If you are walking through affliction right now, you are not failing spiritually. You are not being punished. You are not abandoned. You may be standing in a place where God is doing a deeper work than comfort alone could ever accomplish.

The book of Job exists to teach us this: God’s silence is not absence, and pain is not proof of rejection.

Sometimes, God delivers us not by taking the pain away but by meeting us in it, opening our ears, and leading us into a faith that can never be shaken again.

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