Why God is Making Your Life Harder

Gideon's 300 and how to approach adversity to emerge victorious.

A common experience in Christian life is going through periods when challenges pile up faster than you can solve them, when the odds feel overwhelmingly stacked against you.

Few are the Christians who can claim they’ve never gone through such periods in which the burdens of life feel too heavy to carry. What's even worse: God often seems unconcerned with our suffering during these valleys. It’s not uncommon to feel Him far away from us, not just ignoring our difficulties but actively making them harder by sending challenge after challenge, one on top of the other, allowing them to pile up and weigh on us quicker than we can even begin to process and solve them.

It’s very natural to feel overwhelmed when that happens, and to question if God is truly on our side. After all, why would a merciful God voluntarily make our lives harder?

You know the feeling: when the financial pressure you’re under keeps increasing instead of decreasing, when you receive bad news after bad news in a seemingly endless streak of hits, when you try and try and keep hitting solid walls, until you start breaking down and crying out to God, asking Him why on earth He is making things so impossible.

While in the midst of struggle it might be difficult to make sense of it all, there is an answer, but not the one we expect.

We need to begin by understanding that our challenges are not a personal affront from God towards us, and that we are not the recipients of a cruel punishment. Rather, we need to realize that God has always tested His people, or allowed them to be tested.

From Abraham to Job, from Moses to Paul, Scripture shows us that God's greatest servants faced His hardest tests. Most specifically, we can find guidance in the Old Testament story of Gideon, who teaches us not just how to defeat seemingly impossible challenges, but also explains why God allows those challenges to come.

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Gideon vs. The Midianites

The story of Gideon in Judges 7 presents a striking example of God making a situation more challenging than it needs to be:

Then Gideon and all the people who were with him rose early and encamped beside the spring of Harod; and the camp of Mid′ian was north of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley.

The Lord said to Gideon, “The people with you are too many for me to give the Mid′ianites into their hand, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, ‘My own hand has delivered me.’ Now therefore proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, ‘Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home.’” And Gideon tested them; twenty-two thousand returned, and ten thousand remained.

And the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; take them down to the water and I will test them for you there; and he of whom I say to you, ‘This man shall go with you,’ shall go with you; and any of whom I say to you, ‘This man shall not go with you,’ shall not go.” So he brought the people down to the water; and the Lord said to Gideon, “Every one that laps the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set by himself; likewise every one that kneels down to drink.” And the number of those that lapped, putting their hands to their mouths, was three hundred men; but all the rest of the people knelt down to drink water.

And the Lord said to Gideon, “With the three hundred men that lapped I will deliver you, and give the Mid′ianites into your hand; and let all the others go every man to his home.” So he took the jars of the people from their hands, and their trumpets; and he sent all the rest of Israel every man to his tent, but retained the three hundred men; and the camp of Mid′ian was below him in the valley.
— Judges 7:1-8

Gideon’s story is eerily similar to the famous battle of Thermopylae, in the number of 300 warriors, but most importantly in presenting us with the tale of an army facing off against impossible odds.

Every man feels instinctively drawn towards such stories, as they move something deep within us, and they help us remember, in the middle of life’s most difficult situations, that it’s against overwhelming odds that the greatest victories occur.

Léonidas aux Thermopyles - Jacques-Louis David

But even though we all feel inspired by King Leonidas and his 300 spartan warriors, or by Gideon defeating the Midianites, when the victory hasn’t yet come, when we feel overwhelmed by anxiety and by the shadow of the unbeatable foe, it’s not always easy to maintain our high spirits.

Here’s the pattern we often face:

1. We encounter a big challenge

2. We ask God for help

3. God adds another challenge (What?!)

4. We cry out again

5. God makes the odds seem impossible (Why?!)

6. God grants us victory (when we remain faithful)

Somewhere between steps 3 and 5 (when God seems to be working against us instead of for us) is where most of us despair. But Gideon’s story reveals why God works this way, and what we must do to ensure victory comes.

Victory isn’t guaranteed. It’s not like every one who faces impossible odds will emerge victorious. Some of us will face challenges and choose to stop trusting God, trying to go our own way and crash and burn in the process.

But we can emerge triumphant from adversity, by learning why God makes our lives harder, and secondly, by understanding how we must act in the midst of struggle to guarantee that we emerge victorious.