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.

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.

But here's what you have to face. God, for your good and his glory, has chosen to keep you for a while in this broken-down world. He has chosen to employ the hardships of this world to complete the work that he has begun in you. He does not leave you alone. He does not leave you without resources. He blesses you with his new morning mercies. But he has you right where he wants you.

Their disappointed thinking had a fatal flaw in it. What they saw as being in the way of God's plan was actually part of his plan; what caused their faith to weaken was actually God's tool to build their faith.

God is using the difficulties of the here and now to transform you, that is, to rescue you from you. And because he loves you, he will willingly interrupt or compromise your momentary happiness in order to accomplish one more step in the process of rescue and transformation, which he is unshakably committed to.

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.

No, trials expose what we have always been. Trials bare things to which we would have otherwise been blind. So, too, the teen years expose our self-righteousness, our impatience, our unforgiving spirit, our lack of servant love, the weakness of our faith, and our craving for comfort and ease.

when we are living in the middle of difficulty, we are tempted to view it as a sign of God's unfaithfulness or inattention.

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.

It's so easy to fail to live in light of the fact that Jesus didn't die just for your past forgiveness (praise God that he did) or your future resurrection (what hope!), but also for everything you are facing in the here and now.

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.

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.