Suffering can reveal impatience, anger, self-pity, pride, envy and unbelief. It can show us how much we crave ease, recognition, productivity and control. But this exposure is not God’s cruelty. It is part of his fatherly care.

There are lessons God teaches us in the valley that we rarely learn on the mountain top.

I wish that were not true. I wish there were easier ways to learn dependence, humility, endurance, compassion and prayer. I wish sanctification could happen without tears, weakness, sleepless nights, hospital appointments, unanswered questions and bodies that do not work as we want them to. But many of us know, not merely in theory but in experience, that suffering has a way of exposing what we really believe about God.

For me, this is not an abstract theological issue.

Since October 2013, I have lived with chronic pain. What began as a severe migraine that would not go away became a condition called new daily persistent headache. In simple terms, that means constant, unrelenting head pain. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. No day off. No real escape. It affects sleep, energy, concentration, noise, light, ministry, family life and the ordinary rhythms most people rightly take for granted.

I would love to be healed. I still pray for healing. I do not want to pretend that suffering is easy, romantic or somehow less painful if you have good theology. It is not. Pain hurts. Weakness frustrates. Limitations grieve us. Some days the valley feels very dark indeed.

But I can also say this: God has used suffering to teach me lessons I do not think I would have learned otherwise. He has used it to show me my weakness, deepen my dependence, expose my idols, enlarge my compassion, sharpen my hope and drive me again and again to Christ.

That does not mean suffering is good in itself. Suffering entered the world because of sin. Death, disease, pain and decay are enemies. The Bible never asks us to call evil good. But Scripture does teach us that our sovereign God is so wise, so powerful and so gracious that even suffering cannot escape his purposes.

God Does Not Waste Our Suffering

Romans 8:28 is often quoted, but it must be handled carefully. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” That verse does not say all things are good. Cancer is not good. Chronic pain is not good. Depression is not good. Bereavement is not good. Abuse is not good. The fall is not good.

But God is good.

And God works all things, even the darkest things, for the good of his people.

The next verse tells us what that good is “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). God’s ultimate aim is not merely to make our lives comfortable, successful or pain-free. His purpose is to make us like Jesus. That is both deeply comforting and deeply challenging. It means suffering is not meaningless. It also means God may be doing something in us through suffering that is far more eternal than we can presently see.

That does not remove the pain, but it anchors us in the storm.

Every Christian would do well to have a robust doctrine of providence. We do not believe in a God who is helplessly reacting to the events of our lives. We believe in the God who “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). Not some things. Not only the pleasant things. All things.

That truth can be hard to receive when the pain is raw. But over time, it becomes a pillow on which the weary soul can rest. My suffering is not outside God’s control. My illness has not slipped through his fingers. My weakness has not surprised him. The God who numbers the hairs of my head also knows every throb of pain in it.

Suffering Teaches Us That We Are Weak

One of the hardest lessons suffering teaches is also one of the most necessary, that we are weak. Of course, we say that already. We sing it. We preach it. We confess it. But suffering makes us feel it.

Before suffering comes, we can subtly believe that we are strong, capable and in control. We plan our lives, organise our diaries, set our goals and assume our bodies will carry us through. Then illness arrives. Or grief. Or burnout. Or opposition. Or disappointment. Suddenly, the illusion of control is stripped away.

Paul describes believers as “jars of clay” carrying the treasure of the gospel, “to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Corinthians 4:7). That image is wonderfully humbling. A jar of clay is fragile, ordinary and easily cracked. That is what we are. But God delights to place the treasure of Christ in weak vessels so that the glory belongs to him.

Suffering reminds us that we are not the Messiah. Pastors need that lesson too. Perhaps pastors especially need that lesson. We are not omnipotent. We are not omnipresent. We are not indispensable. We are sheep before we are shepherds. We are dependent children before we are ministers of the Word.

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