Both the pessimist and the optimist know – we live in a complex and complicated world. Bad things and good things happen.
The world is full of pain. The world is also full of people conquering their pain. Short-term pain in life is inevitable. Long-term suffering in life is optional.
Sometimes there is a reason for suffering and sometimes there is no reason for suffering.
We want to believe the world makes senses and that a logical cause and effect exists for everything that happens. But life doesn’t work that way. If you don’t believe me, read the newspaper.
Sin happens.
Floods happen.
Death happens.
Disease happens.
Relational dysfunction happens.
Economic recession happens.
Hurt happens.
Depression happens.
Despair happens.
Sometimes there is a reason for suffering and sometimes there is no reason for suffering.
Our pain can be because of our poor choices.
Our pain can be because of the poor choices of others.
Our pain can happen for absolutely no reason at all.
God is not the cause of our pain.
God wants to be present with us in our pain.
Some things…only God can do.
2 Corinthians 12:7-9
Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
The thing that God can do that no other can do is give God’s grace.
Paul experienced pain. Most likely it was headaches or epilepsy.
The vine clings to the oak during the fiercest of storms. Although the violence of nature may uproot the oak, twining tendrils still cling to it. If the vine is on the side opposite the wind, the great oak is its protection; if it is on the exposed side, the tempest only presses it closer to the trunk. In some of the storms of life, God intervenes and shelters us; while in others He allows us to be exposed, so that we will be pressed more closely to Him and allow God to do what only God can do – give us his grace.
Suffering gets our attention. It forces us to look to God.
Suffering also forces us to look within.
Our response to pain and adversity will simultaneously reveal our current character and develop our future character.
God can only help those who stop hurting themselves.
As I look back on my life, the greatest lessons have not been learned through success, but through suffering.
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
Greatness is born out of difficulty
Matthew 5:4-5
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Most of the Psalms were born in difficulty.
Most of the Epistles were written in prisons.
Florence Nightingale, too ill to move from her bed, reorganized the hospitals of England.
Semiparalyzed, Pasteur was tireless in his attack on disease.
In 1962, a research study of 413 "famous and exceptionally gifted people" called Cradles of Eminence. The researchers spent years attempting to understand what produced such greatness, what common thread might run through all of these outstanding people's lives. Surprisingly, the most outstanding fact was that virtually all of them, 392, had to overcome very difficult obstacles in order to become who they were.
A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.
Saying "yes" to the possibility of love is saying "yes" to the possibility of suffering. Attempting to avoid suffering is also avoiding love. Avoiding love is the cruelest form of suffering that exists.
