Suffering: Gospel Hope When Life Doesn't Make Sense

by Paul David Tripp

The hard things we face are neither eternal nor ultimate. No suffering lasts forever, and no suffering is the lord over our life. What may seem to have controlling power over us does not. What feels as if it will last forever won’t. This means that even in the deepest, darkest suffering, there’s hope and help to be found because God is bigger and more powerful than any awful thing we will ever face. Because

Here is the comfort for every sufferer: hope is a person, and his name is Jesus. Life is a person called Emmanuel. God enters your life by grace and by grace makes you the place where he dwells. So he goes wherever you go; he’s there with you in whatever you’re facing, and he lovingly provides you with everything you need. You don’t have to search for him; you don’t have to wonder if or when he will come; you don’t have to earn his presence. His presence with you has been purchased by his own blood. In your suffering he gives you the best of gifts, the gift of himself. To be in him and he in you is infinitely better than having an easy, predictable, trouble-free life. And if hardship has been the tool that forges in you an unbreakable trust of him, then your hardship hasn’t been for naught. My