Stronger Through the Struggle

Article written by Heather Doolittle

There are certain cultural attitudes that, even though we know they’re false, can seep into our belief system. One of the strongest is the idea that “good people have good lives”—that if we obey God’s rules well enough, He will make things easy for us.

I’ve often wondered why God didn’t give me what I wanted and assumed it was my fault. I questioned whether my heart was in the wrong place or maybe I somehow sinned and derailed God’s plan.

But what if the truth is different? What if God knew the struggle itself would make me stronger?

It’s easy to look around and assume everyone else has it all together. That would mean that our hardships are either the result of our own failures—or evidence of an unjust God. And if we’re not careful, we can even pull a handful of out-of-context Bible verses to support the lie.

However, God never promised us an easy life or even promised that seeking Him would make our lives any easier. In fact, the Bible very clearly illustrates the opposite. Jesus himself only had a few years of a successful ministry before being vilified, persecuted, and horrifically slain.

This realization has helped me understand my Bible more clearly. I used to read Jesus's words, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” (Matthew 5:4, NIV) as though God would simply restore people to a normal level of comfort. But that’s not how God works. The comfort God gives is greater than anything this world could provide. Those who mourn are not simply brought back to even—they are led into a deeper comfort than those who never had reason to mourn at all.

Think about it. When you need advice, do you ask the couple just starting their honeymoon? Or the pair who have weathered decades of storms together and come out stronger? We seek wisdom from those who have endured. In the same way, our pain, disappointments, and struggles give us depth and resilience. They shape us into people who can bear witness to God’s faithfulness.

While the Bible characters who loved and sought God often (but not always) claim great victories, it was never through an easy path. Consider three kings:

• David: the overlooked youngest son, anointed yet hunted. After defeating Goliath, he spent years on the run from Saul, learning dependence on God in caves and wilderness. Hardship shaped him into a shepherd‑king after God’s heart.
• Saul: impressive outwardly—tall, handsome, popular. He began well; but comfort and pride led to the disobedience that became his downfall.
• Solomon: born into privilege and blessed with God‑given wisdom. His prosperity and fame grew, but pride and a divided heart turned him from God and set the nation on a path toward ruin.

The struggles David endured early in life kept him humble in the good times. They also provided a framework for how to repent and come to God in the bad times.

As James 1:4 says, they are making us “mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

That’s why Romans 12:12 encourages us: “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”

• We are joyful in hope—not because life is easy, but because we trust the One who writes the ending.
• We are patient in affliction—because we believe our struggle is producing something we can’t yet see.
• We are faithful in prayer—because we know our Father is listening.

The Beatitudes remind us: blessing is not the absence of struggle. Blessing is the presence of God in the midst of it. And we can have faith that God is using our hardships not to bring us back to normalcy, but to take us deeper in Him and make us stronger, wiser, and closer to Him than we were to begin with.