Leadership Resources: Suffering

The pain and disappointment we experience is the aftermath of this world becoming soaked in sin.

When suffering comes, when God feels distant, when all His promises invoke pain instead of joy, draw near—ask questions.

At the time, I couldn’t see anything God was doing and would never have imagined how He would use that season of pain. But He has!

Here are five principles from the life of Job that will help you find joy in God.

Do you sometimes feel like you may not make it across without dropping dead?

Suffering has been used in my life to reveal who I am apart from Christ and what I have gained in Him.

Not every trial is one that can be lived out in the open. But when you suffer silently, no matter how great your anguish, God sees your pain and has compassion on you.

It’s our loss of perspective that magnifies every little thing that goes wrong.

How can we count it all joy when all we want to do is cry? Or rage? Or at least grumble a little?

Grief at Christmas is hard. But Christmas is for your grief.

Hard is hard, but hard isn't bad.

This grief, this broken relationship, this illness—whatever you are going through—it is not your forever and most defining characteristic.

In the midst of your suffering, remember this: We are only in the middle of the story. Jesus has more to say—and more to do.