Suffering Is Never for Nothing

by Elisabeth Elliot

I’m convinced that there are a good many things in this life that we really can’t do anything about, but that God wants us to do something with.

“Suffering is having what you don’t want or wanting what you don’t have.”

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.

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

And I realized then that God was not telling me that everything was going to be fine, humanly speaking, that He was going to preserve my husband physically and bring him back to me. But He was giving me one unmistakable promise: I will be with you. For I am the Lord your God. He is the one who loved me and gave Himself for me.

It’s only in the cross that we can begin to harmonize this seeming contradiction between suffering and love. And we will never understand suffering unless we understand the love of God.

What happiness will be yours when people blame you and ill treat you and say all kinds of slanderous things against you. Be glad then, yes, be tremendously glad. Does it make any sense at all? Not unless you see that there are two kingdoms: the kingdom of this world, and the kingdom of an invisible world.

Janet Erskine Stuart said, “Joy is not the absence of suffering but the presence of God.”5

C. S. Lewis said, “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.”

God is big enough to take anything that we can dish out to Him.

So never hesitate to say what you really feel to God because remember that God knows what you think before you know and certainly knows what you’re going to say before you even think it.

We would never ask the question why if we really believed that the whole of the universe was an accident and that you and I are completely at the mercy of chance.

Remember that when God finally breaks His silence, God does not answer a single question. God’s response to Job’s questions is mystery. In other words, God answers Job’s mystery with the mystery of Himself.

He is revealing to Job who He is. God, through my own troubles and sufferings, has not given me explanations. But He has met me as a person, as an individual, and that’s what we need.

my faith had to be founded on the character of God Himself.

God loves me; God lets this awful thing happen to me. What looked like a contradiction in terms, I had to leave in God’s hands and say okay, Lord. I don’t understand it. I don’t like it. But I only had two choices. He is either God or He’s not. I am either held in the Everlasting Arms or I’m at the mercy of chance and I have to trust Him or deny Him.

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

The love of God is not a sentiment. It is a willed and inexorable love that will command nothing less than the very best for us. The love of God wills our joy.

Faith is not a feeling. Faith is a willed obedience action.

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. Because I know that what God wants for me is the very best. I will receive this thing in His name.

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

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.”

Just start thanking God in advance because no matter what is about to happen, you already know that God is in charge. You are not adrift in a sea of chaos.