romans on Hardships

On May 20, 1990, 42-year-old Georgene Johnson arrived 15 min early for her 10K race (6.2 mi) as part of the Revco-Cleveland Marathon and found runners already heading down the course. So, she jumped i...

A. Parnell Bailey visited an orange grove where an irrigation pump had broken down. The season was unusually dry and some of the trees were beginning to die for lack of water. The man giving the tour ...

Having hope is hard; harder when you get older.

Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.

Adversity is not simply a tool. It is God's most effective tool for the advancement of our spiritual lives. The circumstances and events that we see as setbacks are oftentimes the very things that...

Of all the virtues we can learn, no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challeng...

Once, when the famous missionary, Dr. David Livingstone, was in Africa, he wrote home to England requesting more workers. In reply, he received this message: We would like to send more workers to y...

Forgiving the unforgivable is hard. So was the cross: hard words, hard wood, hard nails.

Adversity is always unexpected and unwelcome. It is an intruder and a thief, and yet in the hands of God, adversity becomes the means through which His supernatural power is demonstrated.

We probably got a bit too cocky about how well our lives were going. But after disability showed up in our family, we learned that life is not tame. It’s not here to align with our desires and plans. ...

Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

James Stockdale and what is now known as the Stockdale Paradox comes from his experience as a prisoner of war for seven years during the Vietnam War. The Stockdale Paradox, made famous in Jim Collins’...

Survival requires more than the basic biological necessities we readily acknowledge—oxygen, food, and water. It also demands something less tangible but equally vital: hope. When hope vanishes, the hu...

You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, “Take up your Cross”—in other words, it is like going to be beaten ...

If we desire our faith to be strengthened, we should not shrink from opportunities where our faith may be tried, and therefore, through trial, be strengthened.

By perseverance the snail reached the ark.

Leader: May the Lord, who is your stronghold, help you in times of trouble. You who know the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—as your God, trust in the Lord. He will not let those who seek Hi...

Notes on the Passage Besieged from All Angles:  The context of this passage is best summed up with the words recorded throughout the letter: Trouble, Distress, Suffering, Hardship, Death at work, Ja...

The sufferings of Paul are not interruptions to his mission but are intrinsic to it; through them the message of Christ crucified is embodied.

We all know people who have been made much meaner and more irritable and more intolerable to live with by suffering: it is not right to say that all suffering perfects. It only perfects one type of pe...

All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.

For some, faith begins with a hard shell, a rigid set of answers and platitudes that keep them safe but eventually prevent them from growing into who they could be. The system that was initially prote...

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated indi...

Faith does not grow in spite of suffering, but through suffering, when hope learns to contradict reality.

Major Harold Kushner was a prisoner of the Viet Cong for more than five years. Kushner describes one of his fellow American prisoners, a tough twenty-four-year-old Marine who had made a deal with thei...

It’s easy to label what we consider “good things” in our lives as gifts from God and to welcome them with gratitude. But when difficult things happen, we don’t look at them as part of God’s good plan ...

God stretches our faith in order to prepare us to receive his promises. That often requires painful rewiring. We need updating, just as an old house may need rewiring. The old electrical wires might b...

Darkness. If you’ve experienced it, you know what I’m talking about. Darkness sets in long before we’re old enough to recognize it. It begins with anguish. We’ve been hurt, sometimes tragically, and w...

A life-threatening crisis came to my home when I was only 25. My wife suffered a near-fatal stroke and was rushed to the hospital, where doctors scrambled to keep her alive. Within hours, we were maki...

My wife, Lauretta, once remarked to me, “I know I’d die for Christ. If I were put in front of a firing squad and commanded to renounce Christ or die, I know I’d say ‘Shoot me!’ That would be easy. The...