I want to get you to think about and finally find comfort in the fact that our experience of suffering is never just physical. The pain that stops us in our tracks, that makes us want to pull the covers over our head and not face the day, and at moments makes us wish that we could die, is never just physical.

My Savior has been with me, for me, and in me, and he works to take very bad things and produce through them very, very good things.

Look at your trials and see grace. Behind those difficulties is an ever-present Redeemer who is completing his work.

Suffering causes us to scan our lives and face the fact that we control very little. So we mourn not only our suffering but also what it has forced us to admit about ourselves. Our loss of the illusion of control also adds to the fear that accompanies suffering.

Suffering confronts us with the fact that life is not about us but about God. It is not about our glory but his.

When we deny our difficulties in order to feel immediate peace, we are not exercising biblical faith.

Suffering doesn't make us weak; it simply exposes the weaknesses that have been there all along. It exposes the delusion of our sovereignty and independent capability.

There are times when you are tempted to wonder if it's all worth it. But in all this, God is still at work, molding you into the likeness of his Son. It is, in many ways, a multifaceted life of hardship—the hardships of life in this fallen world intersecting with the restorative hardships of grace.

The surprise of situational distress has produced deeply emotional questions that have led them to deeply theological conclusions, but it's been nothing like the sort of theological debate found in a classroom.

Our problem is that we tend to be unfaithful to his holy agenda and get kidnapped by our plans for us and our dreams for our lives. The trials in our lives exist not because he has forgotten us, but because he remembers us and is changing us by his grace. When you remember that, you can have joy in the middle of what is uncomfortable.

even though there is very little that we know for sure about our lives and we experience constant surprises along the way, we need not give way to panic.

The difficulties we face in the here and now are not a sign that God has forgotten or abandoned us. He knows where he has placed us. He has placed us here because he is not after our ease; he is after our hearts.