christian living on Learning from our Suffering

The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.

A Chinese Christian who heard me speak once asked me if I would write a tract about suffering for his fellow believers in the Orient. I told him I would think about it. But when I did, I realized that...

Paradoxically…healing means moving from your pain to the pain…When you keep focusing on the specific circumstances of your pain, you easily become angry, resentful, and even vindictive. You are inclin...

With the global coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, life stopped. Overwhelmed by the threat of a disease we couldn’t stop and for which we didn’t have the hospital capacity, everyone moved work and s...

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

With the global coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, life stopped. Overwhelmed by the threat of a disease we couldn’t stop and for which we didn’t have the hospital capacity, everyone moved work and s...

We live a long time in order to become lovers. God is like a good parent, refusing to do our homework for us. We must learn through trial and error. We have to do our homework ourselves, the homework ...

If you do not transform your pain, you will surely transmit it.

What often continues to shape our stories (interpretations) are the implicit emotional responses to our wounds. We must be willing to attend to our wounds and address the emotions embedded in our woun...

Our culture is afraid of grief, but not just because it is afraid of death. That is natural and normal, a proper reaction to the Last Enemy. Our culture is afraid because it seems to be afraid of the ...

In this short excerpt, pastor and author Austin Fischer describes a surprising dynamic that sometimes occurs in the life of a Christian: believing so strongly in a loving God that one cannot fathom th...

Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.

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

In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light fo...

The bad news was that a friend’s leg was severed in a gruesome automobile accident. The good news was that it was surgically reattached. A few months later she asked if I wanted to see her scar. I swa...

We must learn to see our limits as the entrance into the good life, not what bars us from it. But as we grow older, waiting feels like an inconvenience or affront. We take out our phones when we’re...

Not one thing in your life is more important than figuring out how to live in the face of unspoken pain.

Sometimes the process of growth looks a lot like destruction and pain. But you’ll realize with time that you’re not breaking; you’re healing.

In her book The Broken Way, Ann Voskamp shares a beautiful exchange between her and her husband (The farmer). His encouragement is for all of us: that God uses the broken things in this world for good...

Triumph and failure always go together in the wait of faith. They are the head and tail of the same coin. Show me a person who has had no struggle with waiting, whose faith has known no swings between...

Nevertheless, what was shameful, even odious, to the critics of Christ, was in the eyes of his followers most glorious. They had learnt that the servant was not greater than the master, and that for t...

Ever loving and eternal God, source of the light that never sets and of the love that never fails. Life of our life, Father of our spirits; draw near to us, and by the remembrance of your ancient merc...

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was mean...

Our heavenly Father: You’ve seen how hard life can be for us. You hear our prayers for forgiveness and help. You listen when we cry aloud in pain or when we just weep into our pillow alone in the nigh...

In The Good and Beautiful God , James Bryan Smith describes a new Christian he happened to know who came to him one day feeling dejected. He was so excited to be a follower of Jesus, but he just co...

Pastor: Eternal Father, it is amazing love, that you sent your Son to suffer in my place, that you have given me your Holy Spirit to teach, comfort, and guide me. Because of Jesus’ death in my place, ...

My transition into my 40’s came with the obligatory hip surgery. The only way to stop the cycle of hip pain was to literally carve out some bone. Those parts had to be removed. But recovering my funct...

In his book The Logic of the Spirit, James Loder talks about a woman with whom he had been in a therapeutic relationship for years. This woman’s underlying issue seemed to be a complete sense of rejec...

I see my past drinking as a behavioral problem, a learned response to dealing (or not dealing) with emotional pain and stress. Once I achieved the excavation of my wounds, I no longer lived with the s...

“[Zach] had gone from seeing beauty in the midst of suffering to creating it. He had taken this thing that could have suffocated him with despair and stripped it down until all that was left was hope....