Suffering: Gospel Hope When Life Doesn't Make Sense

by Paul David Tripp

in my suffering, a miraculous thing happened: Mr. Hardship became a tool of my Savior to produce very good things in me, things that I am sure could not have been produced any other way.

Scripture never looks down on the sufferer, it never mocks his pain, it never turns a deaf ear to his cries, and it never condemns him for his struggle. It presents to the sufferer a God who understands, who cares, who invites us to come to him for help, and who promises one day to end all suffering of any kind once and forever.

you never just suffer the thing that you’re suffering, but you always also suffer the way that you’re suffering that thing.

Weakness simply demonstrates what has been true all along: we are completely dependent on God for life and breath and everything else.

God gives us everything we need so that we will live with realistic expectations and so that moments of difficulty will not be full of shock, fear, and panic, but experienced with faith, calm, and confident choices.

Suffering draws out the true thoughts, attitudes, assumptions, and desires of your heart.

every piece of the guilt, shame, and punishment for our sin was completely and once for all carried by Christ. This means there is no more condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (see Rom. 8:1–4). So our suffering is not punitive, that is, not a direct punishment for sins we have committed.

Rather than suffering being connected to the bad things we have done, Scripture connects trials and difficulty to the good things God wants for us and is working to produce in us (see James 1:2–4).

Somehow, someway, all the good things around us are under constant attack. Change is a constant reality. But we all tend to get lulled into thinking that what we have today will be with us tomorrow and the tomorrows that follow.

If you don’t take seriously the groaning condition of our world, you will live with naive expectations of what your life will be, you will be unprepared for the trouble that comes your way, and you will be susceptible to the myriad of temptations that come your way.

Suffering exposes the danger of self-reliance. It reminds us that we were not designed to live independently but in dependence on God and others.

The crisis of faith that often accompanies suffering is the result of a collision between our will and God’s will and our glory and his glory.

We should all take comfort in the fact that the Bible never treats suffering as anything but a real, significant, and often life-changing human experience.

44 percent of the content of the psalms is given over to psalms of suffering and sorrow.

He suffered not just in one way but in every way, and he suffered not just for a period of time but for his entire life. The One to whom we cry when we cry out in pain knows our pain because suffering of some kind was his experience from the moment of his birth until his final breath.

God is inextricably connected to and intimately involved in our suffering. Like everything else we face, suffering takes place under his sovereign rule, and it happens in the middle of his redemptive plan.

The more you focus on the thing you’re suffering, the bigger, more complicated, and more impossible it becomes. But something else even more significant and life-shaping is happening at the same time. As your difficulty looms larger and larger, dominating the vision of the eyes of your heart and controlling the thoughts of your mind, your Lord seems to shrink in size and power.

Because suffering assaults your mind with so many new things to consider, to face, to decide, to wonder about, or to fear, it’s so easy to lose sight of and to practically forget the things that have been your motivation, your comfort, your security, and your rock of hope.

Fear of God, that thankful and reverential recognition of his glory, sovereignty, and power, is how rest and hope can be found in the face of what seems difficult and hopeless.

When you fear God, the equation is not you compared to the size of your trial, but your God compared to it.