Quotes about Suffering

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.

The world we live in is a house of pain, and we cannot live in it without it touching us. You will never be smart enough to escape its grasp. From the violence of childbirth to cut fingers and scraped knees, from sibling mockery and peer rejection to familial brokenness, suffering is part of every phase of human existence. We enter life through suffering's door and we exit life through suffering's door.

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.

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.

Our hope in this life and the one to come is never to be found in our willingness to believe in and follow him, but in his willingness to endure suffering and death for us. His willingness unleashes the grace we need to be forgiven and to become more and more willing to lay down our lives for his kingdom and his glory.

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.

The Messiah the earth cried for now cries to be held by Mary and will soon cry in torment of the cross of salvation. He came to suffer because he came to save. The angels sang because finally hope had come.

Live in hope because paradise is surely coming, and stop asking this fallen world to be the paradise it will never be.

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.

Suffering is an evil that an all-wise, all-righteous, and all-loving God uses for eternal good.