Have you ever noticed that God loves the word “through”? Take Isaiah 43:2, for example, where He says to Israel:

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, Nor shall the flame touch you. (N.K.J.V., emphasis mine)

Another one is Psalm 23:4, where David writes:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. (N.K.J.V., emphasis mine)

We, of course, don’t like the word “through” because we rarely associate it with a pleasant experience. How many times have you said something like, “I’m so glad I finally got through that”? That’s why, in passages such as these I’ve quoted, we would replace “through” with prepositions such as: “around,” “beside,” “above,” “below,” or “near.”

I don’t know what you are dealing with right now, but there’s no guarantee that God is going to come sweeping in to rescue you from that something. No, the chances are higher that He will walk with you through it rather than pull you out of it. I myself have had more of those dealings with God than I can recount, and my guess is that you’ve had your share of them as well.

But let give you a helpful thought about all this. The good thing about you having to go through something is that the experience allows you the opportunity to learn lessons and glean wisdom that you would miss out on if you were spared the ordeal. This is the great reward that comes with any “through” experience. If you learn what God wants you to learn from the trial, you come out the other end of it with a deeper understanding, a fresher perspective, more relatability to others, and, ideally, a reinforced faith.

Therefore, whenever you find that God isn’t aborting the process of what you are having to endure, just stick with Him as He takes you through the circumstance. And don’t lose sight of the fact that He is trying to teach you some things along the way. You see, any such time in your life can be a time of major spiritual growth for you. The only question is: Are you willing to pay the price to do that growing?