The Tears We Weep and the Savior Who Groans
I don't know how you have made it this far, but you did. You kept waking up. You kept showing up to church, even when the worship songs felt like salt on an open wound. You kept praying, even when the heavens felt like brass and your circumstances seemed entirely untouched by your obedience. There is a profound, aching exhaustion that settles into your bones when you are walking through hard seasons, especially when you are doing everything right yet everything around you is going wrong. You just keep going, moving through the motions, desperately hoping to feel God's presence as something tangible in the middle of your quiet nightmare.
When we hit these seasons of profound loss, we often carry a silent shame. We let the enemy take us to high mountains in our minds, showing us all the ways we could have avoided this pain if we had just been stronger, or if God had just intervened sooner. We look at Mary and Martha in the town of Bethany. They sent word to Jesus that the one He loved was sick. They did the right thing. They called on the right name. And yet, Lazarus still died. When Mary finally saw Jesus, she fell at His feet, her heart shattered because the healing did not arrive on her timeline.
Yet, look at the response of Christ. Jesus does not rebuke her grief. He does not offer a hollow religious platitude to rush her out of her mourning. The Savior of the world, fully aware that He is about to command the dead to rise, groans in His spirit. He is troubled. He stops to weep with the brokenhearted. God does not demand that we pretend the pain isn't real. He enters directly into the grave clothes of our sorrow with us.
The miracle of resurrection was never meant to be an eraser for the mourning. Jesus wanted Martha and Mary to know that He was intimately acquainted with their agony. He wants you to know the same today. The stone in front of your promise does not mean that God has abandoned the premises. It means He is setting the stage for a revelation of His character that you could never experience in the shallow waters of comfort.
Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?— John 11:40, KJV
Pressing Through the Crowd of Your Exhaustion
There is a very specific kind of weariness that comes from trying everything and getting absolutely nowhere. You spend your energy, your resources, your hope, and you find yourself, just like the woman in the Gospel of Mark, having suffered many things, spent all that you had, and 'was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse.' It is a terrifying realization when the doctors have no more answers, when the bank account is empty, and when the advice of friends falls flat against the reality of your suffering.
Suffering in faith is rarely a neat, sanitized process. It does not look like a perfectly curated testimony. It is messy. It is a desperate, trembling crawl through a suffocating crowd of doubts, fears, and well-meaning people who simply do not understand your pain. It is holding onto the frayed edge of a promise when every logical voice in your head tells you to just go home, close the door, and accept defeat.
The woman with the issue of blood didn't have a theological dissertation prepared. She didn't have the strength to stand upright and demand an audience with the Messiah. She just had a desperate, exhausted reach. She believed that if she could just make contact with the hem of His garment, the source of her slow, agonizing death would collide with the source of eternal life.
Sometimes, faith isn't a triumphant shout from a mountaintop. Sometimes, faith is the silent, exhausting decision to reach out just one more time. And in that moment of contact, Jesus doesn't just quietly dispense a miracle and move on. He stops everything. He turns around in the press. He demands to know who touched Him, because He values the relationship born in your suffering just as much as He values the healing itself. He wants to look you in the eye and call you Daughter.
When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.— Mark 5:27-28, KJV
The Hard Sayings and the Bread of Affliction
We naturally want a God who only gives us what is easy to swallow. We want the bread that multiplies effortlessly in the sunny hills of Galilee, not the bread of affliction. We want the miracle without the crushing. But Jesus looks at His followers, the ones who were thrilled by the free meals and the spectacle, and He offers them something significantly deeper. He offers them a truth that requires the total consumption of His life, His sacrifice, and His suffering.
When Jesus spoke of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, many of His disciples looked at each other and said, 'This is an hard saying; who can hear it?' And isn't that exactly what we whisper in the dark when we are staring down the barrel of a trial we didn't ask for? We look at the heavens and say, 'This is too hard, Lord. I cannot bear this. I did not sign up for this level of pain.'
But God's purpose in pain is often hidden within the very things we are desperately trying to reject. He is building a spiritual endurance inside of you that absolutely cannot be forged in comfort. The situation you are in right now is forcing you to place your family, your sanity, your reputation, and your very survival entirely in His hands. You are being stripped of everything that is not Christ, so that Christ can be everything you have.
The crowd in Capernaum wanted a quick meal to satisfy a temporary hunger; Jesus wanted to give them eternal life. When we endure the unbearable, when we partake in the fellowship of His sufferings, we are being tethered to eternity. We are trading the temporary manna that perishes for the living bread that sustains our souls forever. The hard saying is the very thing that secures our eternal footing.
Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.— John 6:53-54, KJV
The Glory That Outlasts the Grave
The Devil loves to isolate us in our seasons of breaking. He loves to whisper that your suffering is meaningless, that God is punishing you, or that you have been entirely abandoned by the One who promised to protect you. He wants you to believe that the pain you are walking through is a dead end, a final chapter in a story that ended in tragedy.
But I need you to listen to the prayer of Jesus Christ before He went to the cross. He lifted His eyes to heaven and prayed specifically for you. He did not pray for the world in that moment; He prayed for those the Father had given Him. He prayed for the ones who would keep His word even when their hearts were breaking.
Your pain is not a pointless accident. This is family business. When you are squeezed by the unbearable pressures of this life, what comes out of you is the undeniable proof of who you belong to. The endurance being built in you right now is proprietary to the kingdom of God. You are stronger for it today. You are wiser for it today. And you are becoming a vessel that can carry a weight of glory you previously could not hold.
Jesus declares to the Father that He is glorified in us. Even in our brokenness. Even in our limping faith. God does not waste a single tear you have cried in the dark. Every moment of your suffering is being meticulously gathered and used to anchor you to the Rock that cannot be moved. The axe is laid to the root of everything temporary in your life, so that only the eternal fruit remains.
I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.— John 17:9-10, KJV
You may not see the complete picture today. The stone may still be rolled heavily against the tomb of your expectations, and the days ahead may feel incredibly daunting. But please, keep reaching for the hem of His garment. Keep bringing your raw, unfiltered grief to His feet. The Savior who wept with Mary is the exact same Savior who commands the dead to rise. He has not forgotten you. He has not forsaken you. And He will absolutely not waste this season.