Not Just Getting Out, But Growing Through: Finding God’s Purpose in Trials

• By candidasullivan
• August 20, 2026
• No Comments

What do you think God wants you to learn through this?

Sometimes we think we are just going through trials to suffer. We try to get through it quickly and focus all of our attention on getting out of the pain or situation. But what if the way out of it all is to grow through it? To learn the things only the trial can give us. 

In my darkest hour, someone told me that perhaps God handpicks our trials for us. And that statement made me consider something I had never considered before: What if God could use what I was desperately trying to escape?

And it disrupted everything I had previously thought about hardships. Suddenly it went from something random happening to me because the enemy hates me and wants to destroy me, to something God could use to help me. And that changed everything for me. 

The question consuming my mind went from:

How do I get out of this?

to

What do you want me to learn from this, Lord?

and then

Lord, who are you forming me to become through this?

As crazy as this might sound, leaning into the pain, instead of resisting it, is what we need to do. We need to lean into the Lord and believe that the trial could be happening for us and not to us. 

When we believe something is happening to us, we become a victim of our circumstances. We feel picked on and maybe even a little betrayed. In our minds, we can’t understand why God doesn’t stop it, answer our prayers the way we want, and bless us the way we desire, especially if the painful situation has lasted for years. 

Sometimes I wonder how much of my own pain I have prolonged because I kept asking God to change my circumstances while resisting what He wanted to change in me.

I wanted God to change it.
But perhaps God wanted to change me.

Refusing to change hurts us. We keep repeating the same painful moments over and over. But there is a better way. 

When we surrender our thoughts, perspectives, and feelings to God, He can help us grow through them and draw us closer to Him. God can help us renew our minds through Him. 

I have learned through my trials that it’s not about discovering the strength in me, but about discovering Christ in me. Sometimes we think the goal is to get out of the trial and find relief, but the purpose might be to become Christlike. 

Colossians 1:27 KJV

²⁷ To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:

Sweet friend, maybe the question isn’t only, “Lord, when will you get me out of this?”

Maybe today we can also ask:

“Lord, what are you teaching me here?”

“What needs to change in me?”

“How can this draw me closer to you?”

“How can I become more like Jesus through this?”

I don’t want to suffer unnecessarily. I don’t want pain simply for the sake of pain. But if God can take something that already hurts and use it to transform me, strengthen my faith, deepen my compassion, and reveal more of Christ in me, then I don’t want to waste the pain by only trying to escape it.

Maybe overcoming isn’t discovering how strong we are.

Maybe it’s discovering how strong Christ is within us.

Christ in you, the hope of glory.