Overcoming SufferingSample

Suffering Leads to Growth

You don’t have to watch very many workout videos to know that suffering is a significant part of growth.

Guys like Dwayne Johnson, Alan Ritchson, Aaron Donald, or the classic himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, punish their bodies to push themselves to be the best and the biggest they can be.

Maybe you played sports as a kid. You had a basketball coach, a long-distance running coach, or a football coach.

Suppose their prime objective was to make your life comfortable and easy. In that case, if they did everything they could to keep you from pain and suffering, chances are you would have had an abysmally weak and uncompetitive athletic career.

Sure, you would have avoided suffering, but you also would have missed out on the joys of victory.

Coaches we remember and respect are the ones who weren’t afraid to allow us to experience suffering. They saw our potential and then worked to turn that potential into a reality.

And the only way we could become the best we could be was through suffering.

Similarly, our Father in Heaven is like a coach, but He is the perfect coach. He knows exactly what we need to grow and become all we were meant to be.

Philippians 1:6 says, "He who began the good work in you will carry it on to completion.”

We are a work in progress. We need to grow. We need to change.

C.S. Lewis said it this way:

“I'm not sure God wants us to be happy. I think He wants us to love, and be loved. But we are like children, thinking our toys will make us happy and the whole world is our nursery. Something must drive us out of that nursery and into the lives of others, and that something is suffering.”

Allow God to use suffering in your life to make you all that you were meant to be.

Prayer: Dear Lord, thank You for what You have allowed in my life. I trust that You haven’t forgotten about me. I trust that You know exactly what I need to grow and that You are monitoring me even as You push me to be all that You want me to be. Help me endure suffering like a good soldier, like a determined athlete. Give me the supernatural strength to persevere through whatever comes my way. Amen.

Reflection: How has suffering changed you? How might Jesus use whatever suffering you are going through right now to transform you to look more like Him?