Lucas Leibforth

“Pain Purifies”

We all hit seasons that feel like they’re just too much. Maybe you’re walking through heartbreak. Maybe you’re dealing with health issues or fighting anxiety that won’t let up. Maybe someone let you down, or maybe you just feel stuck—like you’re trying to run through quicksand.

And when life gets like that, let’s be real—growth usually isn’t the first thing on our minds. Survival is.

But here’s the hard truth we don’t always want to admit:
The seasons we want to escape are often the very seasons God wants to use.

James 1:2-4 pulls no punches:

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

That’s wild. Joy in trials? Not joy when they’re over. Not joy once you’re healed or restored or everything is wrapped up with a neat little bow. Joy in the middle of the mess.

Why? Because God is doing something in you through it.

See, pain has a way of cutting through the noise. It removes the fluff. It exposes what we really trust in. When everything else is stripped away, we start to realize: Maybe I was trusting in my plan, not God’s. Maybe I was chasing the approval of people more than the presence of God. Maybe I was building a life that looked stable on the outside, but was cracked at the foundation.

Pain purifies.
It doesn’t just make you stronger—it makes you truer. More real. More dependent. More grounded in the things that actually last.

Let me make it personal for a second.

I remember applying to college and getting deferred. Not just once. A few times. I had a plan in my head, and when that plan didn’t play out, I started to spiral. Not just in disappointment—but in discouragement. I felt stuck in a season I didn’t choose. I didn’t get why doors were closing, and to be honest, I started running from God a bit. Classic Jonah move. I knew what He was calling me toward, but I didn’t like how the story was unfolding, so I tried writing my own version.

But here’s the thing: God wasn’t punishing me, He was maturing me.
Looking back, that was a refining season. God was softening my heart. Stripping away pride and he continues to do this.

He was helping me unlearn some things that would’ve wrecked me later if He hadn’t dealt with them then. That season didn’t look like success on the outside, but it shaped who I’m becoming today. It gave me grit. It gave me clarity. It gave me a deeper dependence on Jesus.

God wasn’t trying to delay me, He was preparing me.

So maybe the fire you’re in right now isn’t proof that God has left you…but that He’s forming something deeper in you. Something you couldn’t get any other way.

We don’t grow much on the mountaintop. Growth happens in the valley. In the stretching. In the quiet. In the “I didn’t ask for this” moments where we have to decide: Will I harden my heart, or will I let God shape it?

Because here’s the thing: You’re going to go through stuff. That’s a given. But growth? That’s a choice.

You can’t always choose your circumstance. But you can choose your response.
You can choose to grow through what you’re going through.

Don’t waste the wilderness. Don’t numb the pain so fast that you miss the purpose. Don’t tap out before you see what God was trying to teach you in the middle of it. Ask the hard questions. Lean into community. Be honest with God. Get in the Word even when you don’t feel it.

And trust this:
The same God who allowed the fire is the God who walks with you through it.
You are not alone. You are not forgotten. You are being refined.

So hold on. Don’t just try to “get through” this season—grow through it. Because on the other side of the pain is something more solid, more rooted, more pure than you ever imagined.