Tag: God in suffering

Afflicted, Yet Highly Favored | Finding God’s Goodness in a Broken World — 1 Nephi 1

Timothy R. BermanLeave a comment

What does it truly mean to be highly favored of God?

Many of us carry an underlying assumption that if we are faithful, life should become easier. We expect obedience to produce comfort, clarity, answered prayers, and protection from suffering. Yet Jesus never promised a life without hardship. He said, “In the world ye shall have tribulation,” but then added, “be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Nephi begins his record with this same tension. He had “seen many afflictions,” and yet he described himself as “highly favored of the Lord” (1 Nephi 1:1).

How can both be true?

Perhaps God’s favor is not proven by the hardships He prevents, but by His presence within the hardships we endure. Joseph was falsely accused and imprisoned, yet even there “the Lord was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy” (Genesis 39:20–21). Divine favor does not always mean receiving the life we hoped to have. Sometimes it means discovering the life God is forming within us through His goodness, grace, and sustaining presence.

Nephi does not deny or minimize his afflictions. Instead, he interprets them through his “great knowledge of the goodness and the mysteries of God” (1 Nephi 1:1).

That distinction matters.

Affliction was part of Nephi’s story, but it was not the final meaning of his story. As Paul later taught, tribulation can produce patience, experience, and hope because the love of God is poured into our hearts through the Holy Ghost (Romans 5:3–5).

First Nephi chapter 1 begins with affliction and divine favor, but it ends with faith and divine deliverance. Between those two declarations, Jerusalem receives a prophetic warning (1 Nephi 1:4). Lehi prays “with all his heart” on behalf of his people (1 Nephi 1:5). Heaven opens, revelation comes, and Lehi is called to testify of the Messiah and “the redemption of the world” (1 Nephi 1:19).

The people reject his message, mock him, and seek his life. Yet rejection does not have the final word. Nephi concludes by declaring that “the tender mercies of the Lord” are over those who exercise faith, making them mighty “unto the power of deliverance” (1 Nephi 1:20). Even God’s warnings reveal His mercy. The Lord declares that He takes no pleasure in destruction but desires that the wicked turn from their ways and live (Ezekiel 33:11). God warns because He loves. He confronts because He desires repentance, healing, and restoration.

God’s warnings are expressions of His mercy, and those who respond in faith will discover His power to deliver.

Today, we will walk through 1 Nephi chapter 1 and examine how Nephi interpreted his afflictions through God’s goodness and tender mercies.

We will see Lehi respond to a broken world with intercessory prayer rather than condemnation. We will examine how revelation led him to proclaim Jesus Christ and redemption. And we will discover why the rejection of God’s message could not overcome His power to preserve and deliver the faithful.

As we study, we must also ask ourselves: How are we interpreting our own afflictions? Are we measuring God’s goodness only by the circumstances we want Him to change? Could the correction or warning we are resisting actually be an expression of His mercy? Scripture does not promise that the righteous will avoid affliction. It declares, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all” (Psalm 34:19).

God’s favor is not measured by the absence of hardship. It is revealed through His faithful presence, His goodness made known, and His sustaining mercy through every affliction. We may experience many afflictions and still be highly favored of the Lord. The hardship is real—but so are His tender mercies. And because His mercy is real, affliction does not have the final word.

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Solidarity in Our Suffering

Timothy R. BermanLeave a comment

Every one of us knows what it feels like to wake up inside a prison we never saw ourselves enter. Not a prison of steel bars, but the kind built from fear, shame, distorted thinking, and the quiet suffering we carry alone. These are the prisons that don’t show up on a background check—but they shape our lives all the same.

And here’s the part we rarely admit to ourselves: most of the time, we don’t even realize we’re locked inside. We just feel the weight. The cycle. The hopelessness. Recovery calls this “your side of the street.” MRT calls it “recognizing your prison.” Scripture calls it remembering—remembering those in chains as though you were chained with them (Hebrews 13:3). Because the moment you recognize your own captivity is the moment you become capable of standing with someone else in theirs. Not with pity. Not with judgment. But with solidarity born from shared humanity and redeemed suffering.

I’ve lived in those invisible cells. I’ve counseled people trapped in them. And I’ve watched God use both literal and internal prisons to refine character, restore dignity, and reveal His mercy in ways comfort never could. So when I talk about suffering in solidarity, I’m not speaking as an observer—I’m speaking as someone who has been behind those walls and found Christ already waiting there. This devotional isn’t about theory. It’s about truth. It’s about recovery. It’s about the Gospel. And it’s about learning to see our own captivity clearly enough that we can walk beside others without superiority, without fear, and without pretending we’ve never been imprisoned ourselves.

What is the prison of your own suffering? For me, it was those moments where my life seemed to come undone – the rug pulled right out from underneath me. Locked in my own irrational thought process, false beliefs, and not understanding the reason I seemed to constantly be in this never-ending cycle of always finding myself in a place of brokenness, suffering, and hopelessness. There are moments in many individuals lives where they are in some form of a prison. And this prison may be a literal prison, or it may be a product of one’s circumstances. Whether this is a place of financial debt, broken relationship, physical limitations, disability, or injury, or any other constraining circumstance. 

Yet, the single most travesty within our Christian faith communities and fellowship is when fellow saints perceive those who are in some form of prison and are suffering – see them with a biased assumption that God has not favored them. That, they have committed some form of sin, or are spiritual rebellion. To some extent, there are those who have this idea that Christians suffering in their own prisons are lacking faith in God. 

However, let’s consider the Apostle Paul: he probably experienced similar judgments and perceptions. Specifically, when we read his epistles that were written while he was in prison and suffering for the cause of the Gospel. Early saints of the way may have seen his trouble as a sign of God’s own disfavor and wondered how someone with so much potential had fallen to such lowly depths. 

Now, consider the reality of what I am wanting to share with you today. Prisons today different from person to person – and are full of God’s beloved sons and daughters. Despite this reality, He uses these prison moments in profound and mighty ways. We see how he used Paul’s suffering and prison moments, Joseph of Egypt, John the Baptist, John the beloved disciple, and numerous other men within scripture. Most of these men were used by God in powerful ways and they have experienced imprisonment, captivity, or depth of loneliness and despair – and our Heavenly Father, in His tender mercies, used those moments. 

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