The Seminary of Suffering

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 

(2 Corinthians 12:9)

This is God’s universal purpose for all Christian suffering: more contentment in God and less satisfaction in self and the world. I have never heard anyone say, “The really deep lessons of life have come through times of ease and comfort.” But I have heard strong believers say, “Every significant advance I have ever made in grasping the depths of God’s love and growing deep with Him has come through suffering.”

The pearl of greatest price is the glory of Christ.

That is why  Paul  could say with all certainty that in our sufferings the glory of Christ’s all-sufficient grace is magnified. If we rely on Jesus in our calamity and He sustains our “rejoicing in hope,” then He is shown to be the all-satisfying God of grace and strength that He really is.

Many of us are not holding on to Christ during times of trials.  We will gasp at almost anything else before we turn toward God.    But, if we will learn to hold fast to Him “when all around our soul gives way,” then we show that He is more to be desired than all we have lost.

Christ said to the distressed disciple, named Paul the Apostle, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 

The very thing we wish to remove might be the qualifier God placed in our lives to prepare and enable us to do his will and work.   Paul responded to this: “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.  For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).

So suffering clearly is designed by God not only as a way to wean Christians off of self and onto grace, but also as a way to spotlight that grace and make it shine. That is precisely what faith does; it magnifies Christ’s future grace.

Here lies the Life lesson:  Like it or not, the deep things of life in God are discovered in suffering.