This is what our hearts long for when we are grieved by the suffering around us and in our own lives. God gave you the Bible so you could know Him. Clearly, He wants you to know that He has a plan to end suffering, but it has not yet been completed, as another passage from the Bible teaches:. But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.
No, He is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. Not only does God care when you suffer, He cares so much that He chose to suffer for you so that one day you can spend eternity with Him in a world without suffering.
God chose to save you rather than spare Himself pain. Jesus chose to become a human and suffer and die so you could be forgiven and live forever with God. For only as a human being could He die, and only by dying could He break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could He set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.
When Christians describe this truth about God, they call God the Trinity. This aspect of God can be difficult to understand and is impossible to fully comprehend, but it is both true and reasonable. Any loving parent will tell you that sacrificing your own life is not the worst type of suffering. Parents would much rather sacrifice themselves if it spared their children. In this sense, God not only sacrificed Himself in the person of Jesus, but He accepted the deeper pain of sacrificing His beloved child.
If God is for us, who can ever be against us? God cares when people suffer in this life. The Bible makes this clear. King David was the second king of Israel. David was well acquainted with suffering. Before becoming king, he spent long periods of time on the run because the first king of Israel, Saul, was trying to kill him. He rescues them from all their troubles. They frequently contain his pleas to God for deliverance from suffering. Psalm 13 is a great example of this:.
How long will You look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand? Restore the sparkle to my eyes, or I will die. But I trust in Your unfailing love. I will rejoice because You have rescued me. I will sing to the Lord because He is good to me.
We can also see how much God cares for our suffering in John Even though He was about to raise Lazarus back to life, He became very emotional when He saw their grief.
This simple statement, famous for being the shortest verse in the Bible, is profound. Jesus did not tell the people to stop crying. He did not say there was no need to mourn because He was about to raise Lazarus.
He paused and wept with them. God knows that one day He will eliminate all suffering. But rather than tell us to stop grieving because our suffering will end, He grieves with us for His suffering people and His broken world.
We see this in the description of the first time Jesus performs a miracle in John Jesus was at a wedding, and the host ran out of wine. This is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Instead, Jesus used His divine power to change ordinary water into excellent wine for the guests. By doing this, Jesus saved the host from social embarrassment and shame. Though God will not always take away problems and hardships, we see from this miracle that He cares about the details of our lives. Not only does God care and empathize with us in our suffering, but He can also bring good out of it.
God is the master of redeeming bad situations. In times of deep, personal pain, those who have gone through a similar experience and can offer empathy in the moment and hope for the future are often the best source of comfort. God knows exactly when to bring those people into your life and remind you whom you should reach out to.
If you have experienced the pain of depression , struggled with infertility or battled addiction , you know that talking to someone who has been there helps you feel heard and not alone. Even a stranger who has walked the path before you can offer something that a friend who is sympathetic but has no personal experience cannot.
No matter how bad a situation is, God can still bring good out of it. We see this in the story of Joseph in Genesis Once there, Joseph suffered more misfortunes, including being imprisoned for a crime He did not commit. But God intervened, and Joseph was eventually elevated to a powerful position.
He ended up saving the whole region, including his family, from a terrible famine. After his brothers came to Egypt seeking food during the famine, Joseph revealed himself to them, and the family was reunited. God used something that seems purely evil — people selling their brother into slavery — to save countless lives. Only a God who is truly good could bring good out of something truly bad.
However, just because God uses something for good, that does not mean that He caused the suffering. Natural disasters, death, murder, depression, betrayal and injustice are not good. They do not come from God. Ultimately, God will remove these things when He establishes a new and perfect world where we can live with Him for eternity. Find out how God can rescue anyone from the dark forces at work in the world. Even when God brings good things out of bad, suffering is still painful.
God is not afraid of your questions, your sadness or your anger. He can handle your thoughts and feelings. God wants you to pour out your heart to Him. He is your loving Father, ready to embrace you right where you are. If you do not yet have a relationship with God, He wants you to turn to Him. Jesus suffered so that you could have forgiveness, hope and an eternity free of pain and suffering. Find out how you can begin a relationship with God. In the Bible, God makes promises to all who turn to Him.
So, if you are going through something difficult or painful, turn to God in prayer. Ask Him to give you His peace and take away your anxiety and worry. You can trust God because He cares for you. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
When you suffer, especially over a long time, it can feel as though the time when you should have been living a normal life is being stolen from you. If you look at moments like this as having no purpose, it will add to your sense of suffering. But instead, you can invite God to use your suffering to bring something good out of the bad. Seeing God at work in suffering can bring you joy and hope amid the pain and hardship.
Sometimes, God uses suffering to bring you closer to Him. He can also use it to increase your faith or refine your character. Often, He uses it to increase your compassion and ability to care for others who are suffering — both those suffering generally and those suffering in similar ways to you.
When God comforts you in your suffering, you will be able to comfort others in the same way. The apostle Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament of the Bible, discussed this in his second letter to Christians in Corinth. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.
Even if your suffering is not over yet, walking through a painful experience with someone else can be a great blessing for both of you. No one needs to suffer in isolation. One of the great things about Christian community is the love and support available to you during both the highs and lows of life.
You can also ask people to pray for you — both for the situation that is causing the suffering and for how and how you respond to it. Ask them to pray for you to have peace and fully trust in God no matter what happens. Romans is a great example of an encouraging prayer. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. Recognize that suffering can allow you to be like Christ, who knowingly chose to walk the path of suffering. Jesus could have had an easier life, but He chose to suffer because He knew that it was the only way to reconcile people to God and ultimately end our suffering.
Jesus knew He would die unjustly. He knew He would be raised from death three days later. And yet the Bible shows us Jesus wrestling with what He has to do.
If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.
For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.
God causes us to long for and experience his comfort so that we would be ready to be agents of his comfort in the lives of others. This means that our suffering has ministry in view. Your hardships qualify you to be part of the most wonderful and important work in the universe. But God has used my weakness, confusion, and fear to soften my heart and make me much more willing and able to enter into the trials of others with an understanding and compassionate heart. Suffering is meant not to drive us inside ourselves but to lead us out to offer to others the beautiful hope, comfort, joy, and security that God has given us.
Notice how this passage ends. Like Paul, God will give us stories to tell, stories of how God met us in our darkest moments of panic and doom. He gives us stories to tell about how he lifts us up, gives us hope, brings peace to our hearts, and meets our needs. We tell others our stories not to point to us, but to point to God so that those to whom we minister will find their comfort in him too. Where has God given you stories of suffering and comfort so that you can bring comfort to those around you who are suffering?
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
This passage is all about spiritual preparation. When you live with a here-and-now mentality, you want this life to be as comfortable, predictable, pleasurable, successful, and enjoyable as it can be. All the hardship and loss we face are designed by God to prepare us for our eternal home. God is working through hardship to pry open our hands and loosen our hearts from our tight grip on the here and now.
He has written numerous books, including the best seller New Morning Mercies. His nonprofit ministry exists to connect the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life. Tripp lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Luella, and they have four grown children. Let the situation around and within you, that seems completely unacceptable be met with acceptance and strength.
The post-pandemic world will be shaped by how we react to fear , and that journey is already underway. The suffering of war has reduced human beings to mere skeletons.
The horrific suffering of cancer has turned once vibrant men and women into physical husks of their former selves. When we suffer we are forced to drop all expectations and demands. It can be our chance to notice even the smallest positives that still exist, like the kind person who comes to visit us as we recover from a devastating and nearly fatal addiction, or the old friend who brings over food after the painful loss of our partner. What I mean is that even a flower growing up through the sidewalk crack has to struggle and feel the pain to bloom.
Anything you accomplish has some pushback and life is a dynamic — and sometimes painful — process. Although some people may seek out suffering as part of a spiritual or religious path which I discuss below , generally it is not a choice. Let suffering and the memory of it be the catalyst that allows you to become a more powerful person: powerful at helping yourself, powerful at helping others, powerful in accepting the sometimes harsh nature of reality.
This idea can be linked to religious systems and philosophies as well as an inbuilt tendency of sensitive people to blame themselves and seek the answer to disturbing things that happen. Our mind tries to make sense of awful things that happen by either blaming ourselves and thinking we deserve it or by believing we have been singled out by some cruel force that picks on us for no reason. Suffering is generally something we categorize along with other undesirable and awful things in the corner of our minds.
On one side you have victory, pleasure, love, and belonging, on the other you have defeat, pain, hate, and isolation. But suffering is also one of our biggest teachers and all of us are going to be getting to know it in one form or another for the rest of our lives. Suffering is going to be sticking around either way. And sometimes the sweat and blood and tears can be the haze that comes before your greatest triumph.
Sometimes the gut punch that lands you in ER at age 16 from a drug overdose can be the experience you look back on 20 years later and she was necessary for the mission you eventually had to help others through their own struggles. All life suffers in the literal sense. Organisms feel cold and hungry, animals being hunted feel fear. Humans have consciousness of death and fear the unknown. The Syrian Christian hermit Saint Simeon Stylites Simon the Elder lived on a one-square-meter platform atop a meter pillar for 37 years because monastic life was too extravagant for him in his quest for higher meaning.
Food was brought up to him by a ladder. In the pain of suffering some individuals can find a cleansing fire.
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