Suffering Is Never for Nothing

by Elisabeth Elliot

it’s through the deepest suffering that God has taught me the deepest lessons.

He has a loving purpose. And He can transform something terrible into something wonderful. Suffering is never for nothing.

“Christ is the head of this home, the unseen guest at every meal, the silent listener to every conversation.”

The deepest things that I have learned in my own life have come from the deepest suffering. And out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires have come the deepest things that I know about God.

The gifts of love have been the gifts of suffering. Those two things are inseparable.

And it has been out of that very measure of pain that has come the unshakable conviction that God is love.

It’s only in the cross that we can begin to harmonize this seeming contradiction between suffering and love.

we will never understand suffering unless we understand the love of God.

“Joy is not the absence of suffering but the presence of God.”

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Acceptance, I believe, is the key to peace in this business of suffering.

“Do the next thing.”

Whatever is in the cup that God is offering to me, whether it be pain and sorrow and suffering and grief along with the many more joys, I’m willing to take it because I trust Him.

Two things that certainly ought to distinguish you and me and everyone who calls himself a Christian are acceptance and gratitude.

It’s not the experiences of our lives that change us. It is our response to those experiences.

We all know people who have gone through terrible things and have turned out to be pure gold.

How to deal with suffering of any kind. Number one, I wrote, “Recognize it.” Number two, “Accept it.” Number three, “Offer it to God as a sacrifice.” And number four, “Offer yourself with it.”

The first thing was that gratitude and acceptance distinguish the Christian. The second was that gratitude honors God.

Jesus offered Himself to be bread for the life of the world. He said the bread that I will give is my body and I give it for the life of the world.

you and I should be prepared, also, to be broken bread and poured out wine for the life of the world.

And third, the greatest, is the offering of obedience.

Everything is a gift. Everything is meant to be offered back.

Suffering and love are inextricably bound up together. And love invariably means sacrifice.

“If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it may be because pieces will feed a multitude when a loaf would satisfy only a little boy.”

the word ministry just means service. And service is a part of our offering to God.

Those who have most profoundly influenced my life are without exception people who have suffered because it has been in that very suffering that God has refined the gold, tempered the steel, molded the pot, broken the bread and made that person into something that feeds a multitude—of whom I have been one of the beneficiaries.

God has put something in your hand that you can accept. You can say, thank You, Lord. And then you can offer it back to Him.

I encourage you to make an offering of your sufferings.

“Measure your life by loss and not by gain, not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth. For love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice, and he that suffereth most hath most to give.”21

what God wants to give me is bread, something that will not only feed myself but feed the world as well.”

Our perspectives need to be transfigured, changed into something that has glory in it.