Is Discomfort Proof You’re Doing Something Wrong?
Today, we are continuing our journey through my latest book project, Finding Comfort In Your Discomfort: Experiencing God in Suffering
When something in my life turns uncomfortable, I immediately run an audit.
I don’t just say, “That’s life.” I say, “Thanks for the feedback, life, now let’s see where I failed.”
And, like a teacher’s aide reviewing a failing paper, I start marking up my life. I replay conversations, examine my motives, and assess my effort. I search for the places where I must have lost points, like spiritual consistency, or lack of prayer, anything that could explain the failure I’m suffering from. Because discomfort, in my mind, is a sign of malfunction. If I’m suffering, then it’s because I must have done something wrong.
This is a personal neurosis, inherited from a culture that treats discomfort like a diagnostic code. If your body hurts, you find the cause. If your relationship is difficult, look for the communication problem. If your finances are failing, analyze your spending patterns because discomfort signals error.
But my grading system is deeply theological, as I reason that if God is good and answers prayers, if He is unchanging, then something must have changed in me that is making life uncomfortable. It sounds mature to take this kind of responsibility, doesn’t it? Humble even.
But humility admits limitation. Shame declares defect. One says, “I am not sovereign.” The other says, “I am the problem.”
It’s a subtle ride down a slippery slope, as my unconscious thinking acts upon its own logic:
God brings relief when things are right.
Relief has not come.
Therefore, something must not be right.
And because, as you recall, I am the one who can change, the error must be mine.
And suddenly, God is no longer the author and perfector of my faith; He is the giver of grades, the evaluator whose approval can only be inferred through outcomes. And I am no longer a child being shaped; I am a paper being scored.
Once God becomes the grader, outcomes become the only visible comments in the margin. And through those, I’ve learnt that if relief equals favor, then discomfort must equal failure.
This relationship settled into my heart long before I spoke it here. And it feels like discomfort is a spotlight searching through the night for whatever is wrong with me.
But I think I’ve identified the problem with my theology: believing that “in progress” means “failing the class.”
The Bible, however, refuses to support my coveted report-card model. Job is declared righteous before his tragic losses ever end. Paul pleads for the thorn to be pulled and hears a resounding, “No.” Jesus asks for the cup to pass and still has to drink it. Unrelieved suffering cannot automatically be translated into deficient faith without undoing the entire narrative of redemption.
But how easy it is to live as if it can.
Enter shame and guilt
Shame thrives when God’s favor feels conditional. If His love, provision, protection, and peace are my responsibility to allow, like I am the tap on the faucet of His grace, then guilt is going to dominate my language, and consequently my mind, body, and actions.
If I believe that silence is rejection, or that discomfort is a failing grade, then I will spend more of my time working at getting better at saving myself than seeking the Savior who already saved me.
Hear this, uncomfortable self: God’s silence is not a diagnostic of your failure. Your unanswered prayer does not signify insufficient faith. Your suffering does not automatically point to your hidden sin. And the delay does not reveal His divine disappointment.
Still, untold millions of us live as though it were true because we confuse formation with evaluation.
Formation vs. Evaluation
While evaluation asks, Am I doing this right? Formation asks, Who am I becoming as I abide in Him?
When our discomfort lingers, God’s not grading our spirituality; He’s forming our maturity. But evaluation-thinking turns formation into self-surveillance, in which, like citizens pressed into reporting on one another, we join the internal surveillance state, keeping files on the “progress” of our salvation, until shame becomes the governing authority and discomfort becomes evidence against us.
Lingering discomfort removes the reassurance loop, in which discomfort leads to prayer, which leads to relief, which confirms God’s nearness, which then resets my sense of safety until the next discomfort arrives.
By contrast, the biblical pattern is that discomfort leads to prayer, which confronts us with God’s unchanging presence, which deepens our trust regardless of whether relief comes or not.
Think about it like this
The reassurance loop says: “If God is near, I will feel better.”
Formation says: “God is near whether I feel better or not.”
Comfort isn’t always the subtraction of pain. But it is always His refusal to abandon us. Jesus Himself is our comfort in discomfort, not because the pain leaves, but because He stays.
It Is Well
I want to stop looking inward and instead look upward. I want to say with the hymn writer, “Whatever my lot, I continue to say, it is well, it is well, with my soul.“
Lingering discomfort doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It means God is not relating to you as a system to be fixed. He is relating to you as a person to remain with. It’s about covenant, not correction.
If unresolved suffering means spiritual failure, Scripture collapses. David, the man after God’s own heart, cried out, “How long, O Lord?” while still calling Him his refuge. He wrote that God felt distant, but he refused to walk away from the covenant. His tears did not disqualify him. His waiting didn’t demote him from Christ’s lineage. His unanswered prayers did not revoke his beloved status.
Consider this next time you suffer; the Psalms exist because suffering lingered in a faithful man.
The Voice of Guilt and Shame
Guilt tells me I have done something wrong. Shame tells me I am something wrong. But the voice that pronounces that verdict does not sound like the Savior who stood between me and my sentence.
If God’s silence were proof of your failure, then the cross would be incomprehensible because silence fell there where there was no failure. Instead, the pattern throughout Scripture is that the faithful wait, and wait, and wait. The obedient endure, and endure, and endure. And the righteous sometimes get no relief. God remains Himself through all of it, though, and we remain in Him.
So when relief doesn’t come, the decisive question is not whether I have disappointed Him. It is whether I will trust that His silence does not redefine my standing with Him.
If lingering discomfort has trained us to pray like a teacher’s aide grading our own papers, quietly building a case against our own discernment, then the way forward is not giving ourselves an F, but remembering God’s Word, because it never treats God’s silence like a failing grade. In fact, the Psalms are filled with instances of delayed relief that didn’t signify divine disapproval. The Psalmists never mistake unanswered prayer for a returned paper covered in corrections.
The Psalmist’s Discomfort
David didn’t approach God like a student asking whether he passed the test or not. He didn’t start by auditing his own faithfulness or recalculating his performance based on his situation. But he did ask, “How long, O Lord?” and “Why do You hide Your face?” and say, “My tears have been my food day and night.” He spoke his discomfort without converting it into a grade, when in the same breath, he said, “But I trust in your steadfast love.” He assumed the relationship was there even when the relief wasn’t. His lament lamented while refusing to treat delay like disapproval.
Experiencing the Comfort of God in Discomfort
When he said, “O Lord, You are my rock and my fortress,” it wasn’t because he was walking on steady ground; it was because he refused to let situational instability define His God. He didn’t wait for relief or proof to speak the truth. When he said, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” the valley was still ahead with no guarantee of when it would end.
The Psalms don’t pull any situational punches. They talk about exhaustion, public misunderstanding, financial pressure, relational problems, and lots of unanswered prayers, all without pretending those conditions meant a failing grade.
The comfort for those of us in discomfort should not be that relief shows up by the end of the Psalm, but that the psalmist still sees God for who He is while the circumstances are still uncomfortable. He looks at, clings to, and relies on God’s steadfast love and faithfulness. He sees Him as his refuge and strength, not for a quick fix, but in a refusal to let discomfort become a symbol of his failure. And keep in mind, he talks like this all while nothing has changed in his life.
I don’t naturally pray like that when discomfort covers everything I’m thinking and feeling.
I pray more like a student, assuming the silence means something is wrong with me. And so I spend more time trying to figure out how to get out from under the discomfort that signals my failure, and into the comfort, which clearly means I’m doing everything right, than I do recounting who God is and what He has done in my life.
Comfort Isn’t Always Good
If good equals comfort, then lingering discomfort will always feel like failure. But if good means being conformed to the likeness of Christ, then formation can be painful without being punitive. Comfort is a deeper thing than relief. It’s the assurance that your suffering is not random and it’s not wasted.
Jesus didn’t promise immediate comfort as relief. He promised Himself, and if He is who He says He is, then your story isn’t spiraling, even though your circumstances may be.
When relief doesn’t come, will you treat the silence like a grade, or will you let Him be God without requiring comfort as proof?