It is almost midnight, and I was lying on my bed, unable to sleep. I was thinking about the experience I had gone through.

“Lord, why do You lead me through such painful experiences to learn a certain spiritual truth? Do You have to let me taste such difficulty and so much hurt just to understand You? Couldn’t You have done it an easier way?”

I was sitting on my bed, thinking about the months past, in one way grateful for the things I learned, in another wondering why God chose such a hard way. I was not complaining, just asking the One who I know loves me the most.

It’s a daunting task, to write it all down, to beg God for words that would truly point to only Him, to invite you in to see all of it, the good and the ugly, the joy and the pain, my heart bled out here on paper. But on the other side of this daunting task, on the other side of the risk of sharing my vulnerable heart with the whole crazy world, is the chance that you might see Jesus here.

As we walk through this life on earth, we are faced outwardly with many hardships, difficulties, sometimes poverty and even persecution. Yet there are other struggles and battles that are often much more intense, much more painful and much more severe than these. These are the battles we face on the inside, the ones that take place in our hearts. So often no one knows about them and no one cares. At times, we are not able to share them with anyone. We fight lonely, frightened and desperate. The Lord’s answers and interventions seem so far away. We know that the outcome of some of these battles will determine if we make it or break under them. Yet when victory arrives and we have overcome, the effect on our own life and the lives of others is tremendous: We have been broken for a purpose!