Walking with God through Pain and Suffering

Suffering is everywhere, unavoidable, and its scope often overwhelms.

The Bible, therefore, is about suffering as much as it is about anything.

Christians taught that Jesus came in a physical body and will redeem and resurrect our physical bodies.

Secularization thins out traditional beliefs, as we have seen. And this secularized belief in God, or this residue of Christianity, may be the worst possible preexisting condition in which to encounter suffering.

In the secular view, suffering is never seen as a meaningful part of life but only as an interruption.

The sovereignty of God is mysterious but not contradictory. It means that we have great incentive to use our wisdom and our will to the best effect, knowing God holds us to it.

God was hearing and responding to Joseph’s prayers for deliverance, rescue, and salvation, but not in the ways or forms or times Joseph asked for it.

If you are willing to lose your life for his sake—if you are willing to set aside personal safety, comfort, and satisfaction in order to obey and follow Jesus—then in the end, you will find yourself.

Affliction makes God appear to be absent for a time, more absent than a dead man, more absent than light in the utter darkness of a cell.

Suffering reveals that there are things we love too much, or we love God too little in proportion to them.

If God is infinitely knowledgeable—why couldn’t he have morally sufficient reasons for allowing evil that you can’t think of?

Because he was truly abandoned by God, we only seem to be or feel to be abandoned by him. But we aren’t, despite our failures.

The secular consolation that 'the dead do not suffer' seems thin in comparison to the Christian consolation of the resurrection.

In suffering, you must read the Bible and pray and attend worship even though it is dry or painful.

True words can be thin medicine for a man in the depths.