When I suffered a paralyzing accident at 17 by falling about fifty feet off a Tarzan-like rope swing, all sorts of trivial pleasures that had been distracting me fell away, driving me to concentrate on my relationship with God. And to this day, my paralysis focuses me, driving distractions away. Although my body is broken, my spirit has been healed through the gift of my suffering. My accident and all the other suffering I have known have given me a ministry and, thus, the privilege of a life abundant in depth and meaning. Your suffering can do the same for you.

In introducing a new translation of Athanasius’s Incarnation of the Word of God, C.S. Lewis observed that “every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes.” One of the most pervasive mistakes of our age is that we in the West think that, simply because we are Christians, God will keep us from much suffering.

Scripture, however, is chock-full with the suffering of God’s saints. Its red thread winds through the Bible from very near its beginning to very near its end, making clear that God often works in and through his saints’ suffering, rather than sparing them from it.

Yet even when we realize this, we often still think of suffering as something bad that is merely to be tolerated rather than something good that is to be welcomed. So, these words may startle us: “You have been given not only the privilege of trusting in Christ but also the privilege of suffering for him” (Philippians 1:29 NLT). We easily can agree that faith — “trusting in Christ” — is a privilege and a gift, but it’s much harder for us to agree that suffering also could be.

How can this be? Answering this question requires us to know what suffering is and how it affects us.

What Suffering Is

We suffer whenever we experience anything that is unpleasant or harmful enough that we want it to end. The more unpleasant or harmful an experience is, the more we suffer. Being sneered at because you are a Christian is a way of suffering for Christ, even if it is pretty mild suffering; losing your job because of your faith is greater suffering; and being tortured for being a faithful witness to God’s truth — like Jeremiah was — is even worse.

The same scale applies to physical woes. If you have a mild headache and you wish you didn’t, then you’re suffering mildly. If you have a migraine that has left you moaning on your stomach in bed, then you’re suffering more. And if you have a splitting headache that you know is being caused by an inoperable brain tumor that will likely kill you, then you’re probably suffering quite profoundly.

What Suffering Does

What shocks us is that the Bible tells us we should actually rejoice in our suffering. Two passages stand out. James 1:2–4 declares,

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Similarly, Paul in Romans 5:3–5 claims,

We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

These passages emphasize that our experiencing various kinds of hardships can produce important changes in us.

Endurance

First, they encourage the development of steadfastness or endurance in the face of difficulties. James urges us to let steadfastness “have its full effect” so that we “may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing,” while Paul spells out a couple more changes that remaining steadfast or enduring suffering can bring.

Character

Second, steadfastness produces character. Character results from having our personalities probed and tested in various ways. Enduring suffering matures us so that we begin seeing life differently. We assess the meaning and worth of the events that befall us in new and deeper ways.

For instance, one psalmist declares that his suffering led him to start seeing and loving God’s word for what it actually is:

You have dealt well with your servant,
O Lord, according to your word. . . .
Before I was afflicted I went astray,
but now I keep your word.

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