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.

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

your hope is not to be found in your willingness and ability to endure, but in God's unshakable, enduring commitment to never turn from his work of grace.

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.

Physical suffering exposes the delusion of personal autonomy and self-sufficiency

The biblical model of waiting is not simply about what you will get at the end of your wait, but about who you will become as you wait.

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

struggles are part of God's plan for you.

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.

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.

If you mourn the fallenness of your world rather than curse its difficulties, you know that grace has visited you.

He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.