God’s Word solidifies this reality for us. He has secured His plan of salvation for us. And as Job finally came to see about God, His force is unstoppable as he realized: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” (Job 42:2) And so our sin, Satan, life circumstances, evil plans, tragedies, trials, nothing will stop God from loving us.

If you are in a season of trial, if you are dragging yourself through the day, these words should bring hope to you. God can and will use even your deepest of trials to reveal Himself to you. However, you have to wait on Him, depend on Him, and trust Him. And God assures you in His Word with His Son’s cross being the guarantee that He can do this because He demonstrated this, He can even use your darkest moments into joy.

Joni Erickson Tada is one living person who reminds me of this reality every time I hear her speak. Some of you know she was paralyzed in a diving accident as a teenager. During a Bible study, she asked the leader this very difficult question: “Steve, was my diving accident, bottom line, God’s will?” In reflecting on this question, Joni came to this astounding, Christ-trusting conclusion:

Sitting there on that late Friday evening, it wasn’t hard for me to draw the parallel in my own life. Maybe the devil’s motive in my tragic diving accident was to shipwreck a young girl’s faith, to make her life be an example of anger and bitterness against God. But it was God’s motive to accomplish His own ends in my life. God’s purposed to turn a headstrong, stubborn, rebellious seventeen-year-old girl into a young woman who, three and a half decades later, is still learning to take grace moment by moment, is still learning to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ in her daily, desperate need. She is still falling in love with the Savior as He escorts her deeper and deeper into the inner sanctum of the fellowship of His sufferings. My quadriplegia is not a jigsaw puzzle that I’m supposed to solve. No, it was not a quick, shocking jolt to get me back on the right track. My paralysis is a long, arduous, delightful adventure into intimacy with my Lord Jesus Christ because He permits what He hates in order to accomplish all that He loves. Christ in me, the hope of glory in my life. (Joni Erickson Tada, “To Know Christ, Now and Forevermore,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling, (Fall 2004), 40.)