We often hear for an encouragement that “God has plans”–that He has a purpose for everything. This we know for a fact as the Bible teaches us many times. So for people in great pain due to loss, those struggling with financial crises, suffering terminal illnesses, and battling sins all around, we say that “God has plans” for these experiences.

Really? Is it safe to say that we fully understand what this phrase truly means? It sounds like this cliché seems to push a button within us to switch on the good vibes; to signal our brain to channel only positivity and nothing else.

These words seem to become a magic pill every child of God takes to cloud their minds with good things to counter the bad. But what if God does not intend for us to counter the bad experiences but to embrace them? What if God gives us the pain to take through the night in our deepest lament and that we are not to escape, or have it eliminated?

Job’s extreme and grotesque pains were not meant to be overcame because “God has a plan”. When Paul patiently looked to God for healing, he was not meant to be healed because “God has a plan”. For Habakkuk, the darkest evils one can imagine were not meant to be answered with the good because again, “God has a plan”.

God brought upon Job great sufferings so that He could raise 77 questions back to back, which only pointed to the whole created order –who is the MOST HIGH. And that was the plan. The matter is resolved for Job and for the narrator not due to the restoration that occurred at the final chapter but primarily because of the majesty and presence of God that was realized through the experience. No wonder then that the writer explained without hesitation, that everything Job lived through are from God (42:11).

For Paul, God inflicted pain upon the greatest of all the apostles to clearly show him that His grace is sufficient; that despite our weakness, His power remains undisputed. That was the plan.

In Habakkuk, God used the most sinister of evils to show His people that He is the greatest source of rejoicing, not His material favors (read Habakkuk 3:17-19). That was the plan.

So the next time we tell “God has a plan” to someone in pain, confusion, deep desperation, great loss, DEPRESSION, or “kept BY GOD in the dark night of the soul”, say these words with great care. Most of these experiences are meant for His children TO GO THROUGH. Even when at times, they require our very lives.

“God has a plan” means in the Bible that God specifically and ESPECIALLY DESIGNED every trial for each of His children. Get that? He especially designed this particular tumor in that specific part of my body at this certain stage, JUST FOR ME. Everything that causes us pain and trouble, big and small, each of them is seriously or intimately being thought through by God for us to embrace. His purpose is to lead us to HIM who brings the ultimate healing: rest for our souls. We are given trials sovereignly decided by the TRINITY for us so that as we embrace our brokenness, we are led to HIM who can make us whole again.