Every step we take toward a desire that rivals God does something to our hearts. It makes what once felt dangerous feel normal. It makes what once convicted us feel tolerable. It makes what once broke us feel acceptable. The Holy Spirit does not wait until we have gone too far. He intervenes while we still think we are in control. That is why some of the sharpest “no’”s of God come precisely in seasons when we believed we were ready to handle more. We told Him, “I can manage this.” And He replied with a door slammed shut. We told Him, “I won’t let this take Your place.” And He answered by letting it crumble before it could sit on the throne. We told Him, “This will not affect my walk with You.” And He showed us in advance that our hearts are weaker than we think, and that His jealousy is stronger than we imagined.
The Holy Spirit is not impressed by our self-confidence. He is committed to our preservation. So when our plans die in front of us, let us not only ask, “Why did this happen?” Let us also ask, “What was this becoming to our hearts?” When a happiness we prayed for is torn away, let us not only cry about the loss, but also ask, “Were we beginning to need this more than we needed God?”
The pain we feel is real. But so is the danger we cannot see. And if the Spirit chooses to let the pain touch us now, to prevent a deeper loss later, then the wound we hate may one day be the scar that tells the story of how He kept us from being peacefully, comfortably lost.
One of the lies that has quietly shaped modern Christianity is the idea that God’s primary goal is to make us emotionally fulfilled. We dress it in religious language, but underneath it is the same old dream: a comfortable life, stable feelings, dreams realized, wounds soothed, desires satisfied in the way we think they should be. When anything threatens that version of happiness, we assume something is wrong spiritually. Yet Scripture paints a different picture.
God is not raising spoiled children. He is forming whole sons and daughters who will share in His character. And holiness often grows best in places where our version of happiness dies.
Hebrews 12:10–11 says God disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness, and that for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Notice the order: painful, then peaceful; disciplined, then fruit; holiness, then joy.
We want God to reverse it, joy first, then maybe holiness. But the Holy Spirit loves us too much to build our lives on feelings that cannot survive eternity. He is aiming at a joy that hell cannot touch. And to give us that, He will sometimes attack the shallow happiness we tried to build without Him.
This is why His work can feel like punishment. Discipline is not gentle comfort. It is targeted pain. God presses exactly where the infection is, not because He enjoys seeing us flinch, but because He refuses to leave the poison in place. When He allows disappointments that shatter our illusions, He is not playing games with our emotions. He is performing surgery on our affections. The cut feels cruel, but the goal is healing.
What looks like a harsh “No” is often the hand of a Father who has decided we will not be lost on His watch, even if He has to break idols we were clinging to. God will send what sometimes feels like wrath in order to rescue.
The worst thing God could do is leave us completely at ease in our sin, surrounding us with comfort while our hearts drift further from Him. That is the true punishment: God handing a soul over to its own desires.
Romans Chapter 1 describes this terrifying judgment, God gave them up to what they wanted. When the Spirit still resists us, still convicts us, still frustrates paths that would make us spiritually numb, it is proof that judgment has not yet abandoned us. He is still fighting for us. This changes how we interpret the hard seasons.
Instead of seeing every barrier as cruelty, faith begins to ask, “What are You protecting in me?” Instead of assuming that God’s love means constant emotional ease, we start to recognize that pressure, restraint, and even heartbreak can be expressions of that love. A parent who never says no, never disciplines, never intervenes, is not kind, they are negligent. Likewise, a God who never contradicts our desires would not be our Savior; He would simply be a reflection of us. The Holy Spirit is not a therapist hired to affirm our every impulse. He is Lord, committed to our transformation.
When we begin to see this, the narrative around our suffering shifts. We realize that some of the nights we cried out, “Why are You doing this to me?” were the very nights Heaven could have answered, “Because I refuse to let you go.” The resistance we called cruelty was God keeping us from a version of ourselves we cannot imagine. The emptiness we feared was the place where He stripped away false supports so we would finally lean on Him for real.
The seasons when nothing worked were the ones where He dismantled the illusion that we were in control. None of this makes the pain less real. The Holy Spirit does not ask us to pretend that loss does not hurt. He does not demand that we smile through every closed door as if we were made of stone. What He does call us to is trust in the middle of confusion, trust that His perspective is wider than our timeline, trust that His commitment to our souls is greater than our commitment to our comfort, trust that when He opposes our plans it is not because He is against us, but because He is against everything that would slowly lead us away from Him.
The question then is no longer, “Why is God stopping my happiness?” but “What kind of person is He making me through this?” If the answer is a person who ismore dependent, more awake, more cautious with sin, more anchored in Christ, then the pain is not wasted. It is not random punishment. It is targeted deliverance. What looks like a storm from below may, from Heaven’s view, be the very fence that keeps us from walking off a cliff in clear weather.
There is a turning point in this kind of journey with God when the questions begin to shift. At first all we can ask is, “Why are You doing this to me?” But as the Holy Spirit keeps pressing, keeps blocking, keeps confronting, another question slowly rises: “What am I chasing that You love me too much to let me have?” That question is uncomfortable because it moves the focus from God’s actions to our affections. It forces us to admit that some of the things we call “blessings” have been quietly replacing Him in our hearts.
This is where the Spirit begins to deal not only with our circumstances, but with our loves. The problem is not just what we wanted; it is the place that desire held in our inner world. We were not merely asking for a relationship, a promotion, a door, an experience. We were asking for something we believed would finally fix the ache inside. We wanted that thing to do what only God can do, give us identity, security, and peace. When a desire is loaded with that much weight, it is no longer a simple request; it is a candidate for worship. And the Spirit will not let us worship anything that cannot save us.
This is why He often exposes the truth by letting us feel how devastated we are when something does not work. Pain is not always proof that something was good. Sometimes it is proof of how much we were attached to it. If the loss of a dream feels like the loss of our worth, that dream had become a god. If the end of a relationship makes us feel like we no longer know who we are, that person was shaping our identity. If a closed opportunity leaves us angry at God Himself, we are trusting that opportunity more than His character. The Holy Spirit uses these reactions as a mirror, not to shame us, but to show us where our souls were drifting.
~Inspired by the works of Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746).