I was in a hurry to get to church for a meeting and thought ordering a plain, black cup of coffee would make it quick.

Greg ran the coffee shop before his retirement. Now he works only on Sundays, though Greg sometimes travels to Costa Rica without telling anyone. He regularly wears tropical shirts that make him look like he just returned from a cruise.

However, Greg doesn’t like cruise ships; he insists they don’t allow enough time with the locals, and they are too commercialized.

Greg is unhurried, spontaneous and outgoing. But I had to meet the core leaders of our church planting team for our weekly training and didn’t have time for small talk. My head still hurt from a lack of sleep, and my mind was on my schedule.

“Hey, Preston,” Greg said from behind the counter.

I smiled and said “hi.” Then we locked eyes.

“You’re a pastor, right?”

“Yes,” I responded. “But I know that’s a loaded word for so many people. I prefer not to lead off with that.”

Just behind me was a giant picture of Greg riding a motorcycle with his third wife, flipping off the camera as he’s driving. Neither the workers nor the patrons seemed like the religious types who post Instagram pictures of their coffee devotions.

“I just had a quick question about all that,” Greg continued. “I know you believe in God, but if God is real, then how are we supposed to make sense of all the pain we experience? I say whatever works for you is what you should do. No one belief in God will work for everyone. Life is too hard.”

And just like that, I knew I was going to be late for my meeting. I had been talking with Greg for more than a year, and he chose that time and place to ask one of the most profound questions about life: What good does God make of our suffering?

Whether they arise from our own experiences, or from conversations with people to whom we are ministering, questions about God’s presence in our suffering are bound to come up. Here are three truths that will lift us up against the gravity of those questions: Jesus anticipates our questions, empathizes with our pain, and weakens the sting of both in this age.

Anticipates Our Questions

Jesus’ humanity was never more apparent than when He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

It wasn’t a philosophical question. It was existential in nature — arising not only from Jesus’ identification with the human struggles described in Psalm 22 but also from His personal experience of suffering. Our pain doesn’t offend God, and neither do our honest questions.

The Eleven must have had plenty of questions in the hours between Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. In their grief, perhaps the disciples even questioned the decision to abandon their regular lives and follow Jesus on His travels.

Christ followers and unbelievers of every generation have wrestled with questions. Disappointment and discouragement can turn to disillusionment when we try to move people too quickly to Easter. Before the answer becomes apparent, there are questions. Before the Resurrection, we encounter the Cross.

In no uncertain terms, Christ’s resurrection is our victory and hope. However, it feels disingenuous to arrive at the Resurrection without first acknowledging that, for some, the agony of the Cross hits closer to home.

Sometimes the existential realities of life are so disorienting that we must spend more time with the Son of God hanging on a tree.

Jesus shares our bruises and scars. Our pain doesn’t go unnoticed. The Lord absorbed it on our behalf.

That is why Paul, writing about death, was able to declare, “But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57). Yet before the apostle penned those words, Jesus asked, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus never guaranteed a trouble-free life. In fact, He said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33, emphasis added). In times of trouble and turmoil, we can find answers to our existential questions not only in Jesus’ resurrection, but also in His suffering.

Where is God when it hurts? Why did my wife get cancer? How did my company fail? When did our marriage fall apart? There will be trouble. There will be questions. “But take heart!”

In books and sermons, author Brennan Manning famously coined the phrase, “God loves you unconditionally as you are, not as you should be, because no one is as they should be.” The Cross lets us know that God truly loves us this way, in the midst of our unresolved questions and our unrelenting pain.

I’ve never been a fan of the saying, “Don’t put a question mark where God placed a period.” Maybe it’s my curious nature or my distaste for clichés. But I’ve also noticed that Jesus himself asked questions.

When I experience suffering and pain, many of my questions echo what Jesus has already asked. As I follow Him, it is natural that I both suffer and have questions. If these were unavoidable in Jesus’ life, how can His followers not experience them as well?

Jesus: “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve (John 6:67).

Me: “Am I going to be alone?”

Jesus: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

Me: “Are You up there? Why don’t I feel You?”

Jesus: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me” (Matthew 26:39).

Me: “When will You step in and bring relief ?”

Jesus leads us even in our questioning. When we feel like investigating God and His character, Christ has done two things already:

1. Through His example, He has acknowledged the pain of the situation.
2. He has shined the spotlight back on us, revealing areas of our lives that need His redemptive work.

Either way, we serve a God who has no interest in side-stepping our hang-ups.

Hebrews 4:15 says, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet he did not sin.”

Empathizes With Our Pain

The Scottish minister George MacLeod wrote, “Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves.”

There was no earthly glory to behold on the hill that day. There was no resurrection to preach. No redemption of Israel in the offing. And, worst of all, no resurrected Savior for the world. The successful mission of Jesus seemed like a quickly fading ministry.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer stated in Ethics, “The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.”

The message of God was nailed to a cross, a place for the thieves and lowlifes of the time. By all appearances, the Light of the World was snuffed out by darkness. Thankfully, that wasn’t the end of the story. As John later wrote, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

Jesus has won the victory, but that doesn’t grant us immunity from pain. In this fallen world, we still experience dark days.

Some valleys are so deep it may feel like the shadows will consume us. I felt this sort of pain and despair as a sophomore in Bible college. The questions started with what one would consider to be apologetic in nature. Is God real? How do I know that Christianity is the one true religion? Why do bad things happen to good people?

I had not yet heard the word “apologetics.” I didn’t know what it meant, who it was for, or how to use it. But these questions quickly turned existential in nature, resulting in a deep sense of doubting that Jesus is who He claimed to be. My thoughts shifted from questions to doubts in the following way:

• “Does God exist?” became, “Does God make a difference in my life?”
• “Is Christianity the one true religion?” became, “Who cares about what is true?”
• “Why do bad things happen to good people?” became, “Why am I suffering and no one cares?”

Our pain doesn’t offend God, and neither do our honest questions.

I was sinking from doubt into serious depression. At one point, I looked a doctor in the eye and said, “Please find something wrong with me and give me a pill to fix it.”

A pill or a Savior ... I would have taken either. Since it felt like my Savior was still hanging on a tree, I wanted to try something else.

I was unhappy with the belief system I had chosen, and it felt like I was at a standstill.

In his children’s classic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis described a grim season in the land of Narnia: “always winter, but it never gets to Christmas.” Similarly, it felt like the Crucifixion was the end of the story. Where was Easter?

Perhaps this is how the disciples felt the day Jesus died. The claims they wanted to be true didn’t seem to be holding up to what was right in front of them. The disciples needed Jesus off that tree and active in the world again.

Little did the disciples know that for the greatest act in history to take place, Jesus had to conquer the deepest pains. And to conquer them, He had to face them. Experience them. Question them.

Such things are not always evident in the moment of suffering and pain. However, we do not have to stay perplexed. There is hope moving forward. There are perspective-shifting attitudes that help us untangle ourselves from the common assumption that we are owed more in this life.

Stephen Hawking was an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge. Although his brilliance and character did not always line up, there is no disputing that Hawking made substantial advancements in the theory of relativity. Hawking also had Lou Gehrig’s disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS), which eventually took his life.

Over time, Hawking lost the ability to walk and speak. He learned to articulate his thoughts through the tiniest movements of his fingers. This didn’t stop Hawking from writing, progressing in his field of study, and participating in interviews.

In December 2004, a reporter asked Hawking how he kept his spirits up. Hawking’s response was fascinating: “My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.”

Suddenly, each small pleasure becomes priceless when you have to count your days.

I realize a famous atheist may seem out of place in a discussion of Christ’s work on the cross. But the point is, all people experience more dramatic questions in the wake of pain. Of course, not all come to a saving knowledge of Christ.

The best Hawking could do was learn to live each day with gratitude. Although good, Christians have a brighter light to shine than that.

As I have talked with atheists and skeptics, I have learned that how we respond to the existential questions of life should truly differentiate Christ followers from others. Gratefulness is the floor, not the ceiling, for those who understand what Jesus did on the cross.

If you find yourself haunted by questions of God’s seeming absence and lack of power in your life, know that He is with you in your pain.

When faced with the death of a loved one, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). This seems natural enough — except when you read further and realize Jesus must have known He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead a few moments later.

We know why we cry when someone dies. Simply, we don’t have the power to resurrect them. Why was Jesus crying? I sincerely believe the pain of His followers moved Him to tears.

As the “image of the invisible God,” Jesus shows us what the Father feels over our affliction and grief. God does not take pleasure in our suffering. Whether it is a literal death, or the death of a relationship with someone we trusted, God is compassionate, and Christ’s tears are real. Jesus truly understands our pain.

Weakens Their Sting

The Cross represents so much more than God’s ability to empathize with our physical or emotional pain.

Jesus experienced all possible types of suffering on the cross — spiritual, physical and emotional.

Isaiah 53:3-5 prophetically described the scene: “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”

The enemy of our souls exhausted the weapons of hell on one Man, but Jesus turned the tables. Colossians 2:15 declares that Christ, “having disarmed the [spiritual] powers and authorities, made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

In light of the Resurrection, no worldly hope compares to the light of God, shining through Christ on the cross. As you minister to those who are suffering this Easter, be careful not to compare their struggles to anything other than what Christ experienced on the cross.

The point is not to minimize their pain, but to offer a reminder that the God who experienced exponentially greater pain than any one of us has promised to walk with us through what feels overwhelming.

This is why the Cross may seem more real than the Resurrection on this side of eternity. It is the part of the story we can feel, see and touch. It doesn’t take faith to suffer. It takes faith to trust the One who went before our suffering, in all ways, and came out victoriously.

God pivoted all of history toward the deepest sorrow and greatest injustice that have ever taken place, so we could all see and experience the greatest victory of all time.

Our questions about pain and suffering lead us to the Cross, but they don’t leave us at the Cross. If Jesus’ pain gives us comfort in this life, His resurrection gives us hope that nothing in this life will have the final say.

The message of Easter is not just that Jesus is alive. The message of Easter is that Jesus has risen! Everything was placed on Him, but none of it could hold Him down.

Jesus is the Pioneer who has gone before us in every way. Christ knows the path of our questions and pain. He has the scars of One who has gone through suffering, and He lives to tell about it.

I’ve always found it curious that the glorified body of Christ retained its scars. We don’t know much about what the resurrected Lord looked like, but Scripture seems to indicate He had scars (John 20:24-27). It’s as if the Resurrection is insufficient without the Cross, and the Cross is entirely worthless without the Resurrection.

Our God bears the marks of our questions and pain. Not only does He weaken the sting of both in this age, but He will ultimately remove the sting entirely in the age to come. “Then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’” (1 Corinthians 15:54-55; cf. Isaiah 25:8; Hosea 13:14).

Since Jesus went before us, He now gives us the strength to go with Him.

The author of Hebrews put it this way: “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil — and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death ... . Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:14-15,18 ).

When I finally finished my conversation with Greg, he told me he had never noticed how Jesus experienced similar pain. Greg had heard about the Resurrection, but never the humanity of Jesus in the Crucifixion. From then on, I changed my leader’s meetings so Greg and I could meet every Sunday to talk through his questions about life.

For Greg, the gospel wasn’t good news if we skipped straight to the Resurrection. Not only was it how he learned of a God who knows our pain, but it is also where Greg learned how much God loves him.

Wherever you have dialogue about Jesus this Easter, make sure your sermons and conversations leave room for those struck down with questions about life. It makes the Resurrection all the more remarkable!

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2020 edition of Influence magazine.