Life is often hard, but God is always good. His love for us is both unfailing and unconditional. He is infinitely compassionate and benevolent.

God cares for us so much that he has obligated himself to help us endure our afflictions, to produce goodness from them, and to rectify them as he deems best.

A promise he conveyed through Joseph in the Old Testament centuries ago summarizes his commitment.

The promise—God will surely come to your aid—applies to every hurting person who seeks him on his terms.

Nature Of God’s Aid

So, how does God come to our aid during tough times?

He helps us cope with our distress by delivering peace, hope, comfort, strength, and stamina as we walk in harmony with him.

He infuses our suffering with meaning and purpose by ultimately using it to benefit us and those within our sphere of influence.

He resolves our situation in accordance with the designs and objectives of his plans for us and the people in our orbit.

Right Expectations

This is all well and good, but if it were up to us, God’s aid would be preventative.

He would order our lives in such a way that we never encountered deprivation or discomfort.

Or, at a minimum, he would mitigate our hardships by minimizing their intensity and duration.

But as we know from experience, God does not always alleviate our distress as we wish for us or expect from him.

Suffering Raises Doubts

For this reason, suffering can raise doubts about God that make us reluctant to trust him.

We are not unique in that regard. Every Bible hero wrestled with the same issue at some point in their lives.

But as they learned, and we must remember, suffering is not evidence that God is untrustworthy.

Instead, it is the inevitable consequence of the sin that infects the world.

God’s Promise Evidences Truths

This basic understanding of why we suffer suffices when our lives are relatively pleasant, but it can seem sorely lacking when we confront pain, anguish, or grief.

So, on what basis do we trust God, then?

The answer: his promise of aid and the fact that, by nature, he cannot lie.

The pledge—God will surely come to your aid—includes six inherent truths that affirm his character, compassion, and competence and justify our trust in him.

God exists. He is present with us. He sees our plight. He cares about us. He has the resources to help us. He has obligated himself to help us.

Note the emphatic phrase in the promise.

It does not merely state, “God will come to your aid.” Instead, it declares, “God will surely come to your aid.”

Primacy Of Faith

Trusting God amid affliction is easy when our ordeals are brief, infrequent, and mild, and they never violate our sense of fairness.

However, trusting him when our suffering is severe, continuous, or unfair can be problematic.

These conditions require us to exercise faith, which is a choice, not a feeling.

Exercising faith means choosing to believe what God has revealed about himself through nature and in the Bible rather than inferring from our afflictions that he is mean, aloof, powerless, or nonexistent.

By faith, we walk in harmony with God despite our distress, presuming he is utterly good, his ideas and methods are always superior to ours, and his love for us is indeed unfailing and unconditional.

We believe, by faith, that he will fulfill his promise of aid.

Walking In Harmony With God

God provides a common good for everyone, but only those who walk in harmony with him have access to the full array of his aid.

Walking in harmony with God requires us to be spiritually reborn, to commune with him regularly, and to obey his precepts as consistently as we can.

We can begin to walk in harmony with God at any time, regardless of our past unbelief or present unrighteousness.

However, because of our sinful nature, we cannot live in consonance with God through our efforts alone. We must humbly rely on the Holy Spirit for assistance. 

In response to this contrite reliance, he strengthens our stamina, intensifies our noble desires, reinforces our self-discipline, and explicitly empowers us as needed.

Personal Transformation

God changes us for the better over time as we walk in harmony with him amid affliction. This transformation is part of his aid package.

Subject to our permission, he reorients our lives around his plans, priorities, principles, and precepts, much to our ultimate delight.

He produces in us the divine attributes that constitute true contentment.

God Is Enough

God also draws near to us as we walk in harmony with him during distress. This intimacy is another aspect of his promised aid.

He reveals, in time, aspects of his excellence that we would never comprehend if life were always easy.

Through our adversities, we learn that he truly is who he claims to be—our refuge, comforter, redeemer, deliverer, and friend.

We come to understand that when other sources of contentment fade, God himself is enough to satisfy our soul.

Welcome to WillSurely.com

This website seeks to raise awareness about the certainty of God’s promise to help hurting people as they walk in harmony with him.

The nearby Level One menu expounds on this promise. The Level Two dropdown menus address the paradox of our suffering and God’s goodness.

Both levels include insights about walking in harmony with him.