Grateful for the Hard Things
By M.T. Clark — P-2118 | 11/11/2026 – Today’s Audio Podcast
Today’s Message on YouTube:
Today’s photo of Frederic Edwin Church’s oil painting “New England Scenery (1851),” with a covered wagon crossing a wooden bridge over a still lake in the foreground of a rocky mountain peak under a pastel sky filled with billowing white clouds, comes to us from yours truly, as I captured this work of art at the Michele & Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, MA, on December 9, 2023.
Well, it’s Wednesday, and I share this photo of a bright mountain peak rising at the center of Church’s landscape to visually represent our arrival to another midweek summit, so happy hump day, and to remind us that the climb we are on today is part of a larger landscape the Lord has already painted for our good.
The Lord often uses the hard rises in our lives, climbing out of those valleys of darkness or difficult seasons, to get our attention, but when we know Him, we can trust that the whole pathway of our lives is being worked by His hand for our good. When we lean on His strength and wisdom, we can be sure that He will see us through and get us back home.
Today, on Veterans Day, we also pause to thank the men and women who have served our country in uniform, who have faced unbelievable challenges and carried hard things for the sake of the rest of us, and we thank the Lord for their willingness to put aside their personal freedom for a time of service to their country and for the freedom of their friends, family, and neighbors. Speaking of being grateful even in the hard things…
Our series, “Gratitude & Grace,” continues today with the most quoted promise in the New Testament, and the careful reading it deserves.
Grateful for the Hard Things
Romans 8:28 may be the most quoted verse in the New Testament, and it may also be the most misquoted one. It gets handed to grieving people at funerals and to exhausted people in hospital hallways, sometimes with real love behind it and sometimes as a way of ending a conversation that has become uncomfortable. So, let’s read it slowly and get it right, because when it’s received in spirit, it’s one of the strongest things a suffering believer can stand on.
Romans 8:28 (NKJV) tells us: “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”
The first thing to see is what Paul does not say. He doesn’t say that all things are good. God has never asked us to look at evil and call it good. He hates what sin has done to His world. If you’ve lost someone, or been betrayed, or had something taken from you that you’ll never get back, God is not requiring you to pretend that the thing itself was a gift. It wasn’t.
What Paul says is that all things work together for good. The verb is sunergeō, which is where our word “synergy” comes from. It describes separate things being brought into a single work that none of them, individually, could have produced alone. Paul is telling us that God is at work in and through and around every circumstance of a believer’s life, weaving even the things that were meant to destroy us into a purpose that will be for good in the end.
God doesn’t ask us to lie about our pain, but when we see how He uses everything for His good purposes, we can realize that our pain isn’t wasted.
The second thing to see is that Paul defines what he means by “good,” in the very next verse. He says God works all things together for good because those “He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son”. That’s what’s good. It’s not comfort, an easy road, or the outcome we asked for on the timeline we wanted. The good thing that God is working toward is that we would come to look like Jesus.
The third thing to see is who this promise is for. Paul says it’s for those who love God, for those who are the called according to His purpose. This isn’t a general principle about the universe, the way people use it when they say everything happens for a reason. It’s a family promise, made to people who belong to God through Jesus Christ. If you’re in Christ, it’s yours. If you haven’t put your faith in Jesus yet, the invitation to come in is open, and it’s the best news there is.
So how do we get from that to gratitude? I want to be careful here, because there’s a false version of this that has hurt a lot of people, and I’ve watched it happen. The false version says a good Christian should feel thankful for the hard thing itself, but that isn’t what Scripture asks us to do, and I won’t ask you to do it either.
Here’s what we can do instead. We can be grateful in the hard thing, and we can be grateful for what God is doing with the hard thing. Those are two honest acts of thanksgiving, and neither one requires us to call evil good.
Let me say plainly where I’ve seen this. A while back I lost a job I’d held for a long time. There was nothing pleasant about that stretch. It was uncertain, it was humbling, and I didn’t enjoy a minute of it. And yet God provided another position, and He provided it in a way I couldn’t have arranged for myself, and looking back, I can see that the change gave me things that the old job never would have. I still wouldn’t call the loss good. But I can thank God without reservation for what He did with it, and I can tell you He was never once absent in the midst of it.
That’s how we can practice gratitude in a hard season. We don’t thank God for the wound or the loss, but we can thank Him for being with us in it. We can thank Him for not leaving us or forsaking us in those hard times and trust that He is doing something with it that we’ll understand better later.
So, our part, right in the middle of it, is to hold on and give thanks. We surrender the outcome we were holding out for. We trust that God is working, and we keep cooperating with what He’s doing in us, one step at a time and one day at a time.
So, give thanks in the hard seasons and keep on walking and talking with God.
— M.T.
*******************************
Wrestling with something today? Ask M.T.’s Digital Mind any time, day or night: mt4christ.com/digital-mind
Check out our past Podcast series or teachings via The MT4Christ247 podcast playlists on YouTube at MT4Christ.com!
The MT4Christ247 audio podcast is available on YouTube, Apple, Amazon, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Podbean, Audible, and many more podcast platforms!
Subscribe to The MT4Christ247 Channel on YouTube!
Email me at m.t.clark@mt4christ.com with any questions, comments, or to inquire about our Christian Life Coaching or Prayer Ministry Services.
“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”
Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship
Support MT 4 Christ Community Freedom Ministry!
To give via PayPal, go to the MT4Christ Donations Page
Or Give Via Venmo or the Cash App by scanning the QR Code below:
Leave a Reply