Quotes About Suffering

What is God doing in the here and now? He is employing the difficulties of life as tools of grace to produce character in you that would not grow any other way.

Todos necesitamos a alguien que nos recuerde que la vida no se define por nuestro dolor, sino por nuestra unión con Cristo.

The central lie of Satan to all God's suffering children comes in the form of this question: "Where is your God now?" The lie embedded in this question is that our suffering is clear evidence that we have been forsaken by God.

God's often-repeated declaration that he will not leave sits on the pages of his Word as a protection against the lies to which suffering makes us susceptible.

You never have to feel or act as if you're alone in your suffering, because the One who sits on the throne at the right hand of the Father not only faced all the things that you now face, but he also faced the myriad of temptations that you and every other sufferer faces.

Physical suffering exposes the delusion of personal autonomy and self-sufficiency

No one rose to his defense. He not only suffered; he suffered alone. Even his Father turned his back on him in his deepest moment of agony.

suffering is not an unusual, surprising experience; it's the experience of everyone who lives in this dramatically broken world.

The crisis of faith that often accompanies suffering is the result of a collision between our will and God's will and our glory and his glory.

The commands, principles, and case studies of Scripture will take you only so far in your quest to figure out your life. There will be moments when you simply don't understand what is going on. In fact, you will face moments when what the God who has declared himself to be good brings into your life won't seem good. It may even seem bad, very bad.

Here is suffering's paradox: the very things we would do anything to avoid, the very things that confront our understanding of who we are, and the very things that cause us the most pain become the very things that usher into our lives the blessings of the help, hope, peace, and rest that we all long to experience.

The good news of the kingdom is not freedom from hardship, suffering, and loss. It is the news of a Redeemer who has come to rescue me from myself.

Suffering has the power to expose what you've been trusting in all along. If you lose your hope when your physical body fails, maybe your hope wasn't really in your Savior after all.

No, I don't like the travail of pain or loss anymore than you do, but in my suffering, a miraculous thing happened: Mr. Hardship became a tool of my Savior to produce very good things in me, things that I am sure could not have been produced any other way.

Scripture never looks down on the sufferer, it never mocks his pain, it never turns a deaf ear to his cries, and it never condemns him for his struggle. It presents to the sufferer a God who understands, who cares, who invites us to come to him for help, and who promises one day to end all suffering of any kind once and forever. Because of this, the Bible, while being dramatically honest about suffering, is at the same time gloriously hopeful.

God is working right now, but not so much to give us predictable, comfortable, and pleasurable lives. He isn't so much working to transform our circumstances as he is working through hard circumstances to transform you and me.

You see, you and I only ever really understand the painful trials of this moment when we look at them through the lens of eternity.

Our agenda, our definition of what a good God should give us, is a life that is comfortable, pleasurable, and predictable; one in which there's lots of human affirmation and an absence of suffering. But consider God's agenda,

Rather than suffering being connected to the bad things we have done, Scripture connects trials and difficulty to the good things God wants for us and is working to produce in us (see James 1:2–4).

Suffering doesn't so much change your heart as expose what has been in your heart all along.

Just like Adam, when we blame people and situations for our problems, below the surface we are also making accusations against God.

Suffering, sadness, and death are not yet no more. It is hard to live in the middle, but that is exactly where we live. We live in a world that is still sadly and terribly broken.

future happiness cannot compensate for current misery; lost happiness is lost forever. Powered

Selfishness causes friction. It makes harmful sparks fly because it rubs the wrong way against reality. For Buddhists selfishness is not so much sinful as it is stupid. (But like Christian sin, it causes suffering, for self and others.)