Let the hard things in life break you. Let them effect you. Let them change you. Let these hard moments inform you. Let this pain be your teacher. The experiences of your life are trying to tell you something about yourself. Don't cop out on that. Don't run away and hide under your covers. Lean into it.

We think that by protecting ourselves from suffering we are being kind to ourselves. the truth is, we only become more fearful, more hardened, and more alienated.

Job was still in God's will even when he lost his children, wealth, and health.

There is always a Ziklag battle before a Zion victory.

What our Heavenly Father wants us to do about our spiritual failures is like what our earthly father wants us to do about our earthly failures. When we fall off the horse, or the bike, or the high road to Heaven, we must simply climb on again as soon as we are aware of the fact that we have fallen off, rather than sitting there stewing in self-pity or self-hatred.

Despair itself can be hopeful if it is honest.

Furthermore, the most popular modern answer to the question of what it means to be a good person is to be kind. Do not make other people suffer. If it doesn't hurt anyone, it's O.K. By this standard, God is not good it he lets us suffer. But by ancient standards, God might be good even though he lets us suffer, if he does it for the sake of the greater end of happiness, perfection of life and character and soul, that is, self.

God, I love You for making me suffer like this. It is Your will. You know the best for me. And I just praise You for loving me enough to allow me to experience this. In all things, including this, I give thanks.

Quite often the Lord uses the adversity in our lives as a lens through which He can be seen! In the process of it all, He is developing our character so that we can be worthy reflectors of His glory. Paul teaches us that character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trials and suffering can the soul be strengthened.

1. Adversity promotes the progress of the gospel. 2. Adversity provides opportunities to witness. 3. Adversity produces courage in our fellow believers. 4. Adversity proves the character of our friendships. 5. Adversity provokes growth in our lives. 6. Adversity purifies our motives. 7. Adversity prepares us to see life and death in perspective.

Sometimes it is only through pain that we become who God wants us to be.

If you have a steel ball, solid steel, the size of this earth, 25,000 miles in circumference, and every one million years a little sparrow would be released to land on that ball to sharpen his beak and fly away only to come back another million years later and begin again, by the time he would have worn that ball down to the size of a BB, eternity would have just begun.