Why Suffering?

Suffering sucks.

We do everything to avoid suffering.

Suffering sucks.

Suffering sucks because there’s never a time where I have suffered and it felt good. Every time I have suffered, it sucked because it hurt.

But sometimes, suffering is the only way we grow and mature.

God allows suffering because God is more interested in our growth and maturity than our happiness.

I know. I don’t like that either.

Check out what the Bible has to say about suffering.

“Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy” (John 16:20).

“But we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5).

“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21).

There is a blessing, a maturing, a growth that won’t ever take place in ease. There is a blessing which only suffering can teach us.

Earlier I said that God is more interested in our growth and maturity than God is interested in our happiness.

Here is the best part: Genuine happiness and a sense of well-being, shalom is the result of growth and maturity. The happiness that growth and maturity brings is not temporary nor circumstantial. It is a sense of well-being that transcends the temporary and replaces it with a joy and purpose that becomes a state of being.

Why does God allow suffering? Because God wants us to grow and there is a maturity and growth that only suffering can teach. And it is when we grow and mature that we experience joy and fulfillment.