Suffering Is Never for Nothing

by Elisabeth Elliot

And I’ve come to see that it’s through the deepest suffering that God has taught me the deepest lessons. And if we’ll trust Him for it, we can come through to the unshakable assurance that He’s in charge. He has a loving purpose. And He can transform something terrible into something wonderful. Suffering is never for nothing.

Suffering is a mystery that none of us is really capable of plumbing.

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.” I think that covers everything.

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.

Although I have not found intellectual satisfaction, I have found peace.

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.

And so I can say to you that suffering is an irreplaceable medium through which I learned an indispensable truth. I Am. I am the Lord. In other words, that God is God. Well,

In fact, 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.”

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

It is my life for yours. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the principle of the cross. That’s what Jesus was demonstrating. My life for yours.

Now faith, like love, is not a feeling. We need to get that absolutely clear. Faith is not a feeling. Faith is a willed obedience action.

Some day, even you will see that there’s sense in this. Your suffering is never for nothing.

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.”

Suffering and love are inextricably bound up together.

And love invariably means sacrifice.

There is, in fact, no redemptive work done anywhere without suffering.