"As we enter into the conversation of medically assisted suicide, establishing the foundation of a biblical view on death and suffering is key." - Kainos
"...at Nanci’s request and on short notice, our daughters and their families gathered to hear her speak final words of overflowing love for us and unswerving trust in her sovereign King." - Randy Alcorn
"He told Martha, 'Your brother will rise again' (11:23) but He did not say to Martha, 'Don’t grieve.' He is the Resurrection and the Life, but He weeps with Martha and Mary over their loss." - Colin Smith
"...every worldview under the Sun must deal with the problem of pain and suffering..... having God in the equation is humanity’s last best hope of making sense of this issue." - Reasons
"I’ve been praying the Psalms, in some form, for almost 40 years now. Over those years, through seasons of ecstatic joy and abiding sorrow, I have experienced the Word-at-work-in-the-Psalms faithfully forming me, and forming so many others, toward Christlikeness." - Dan Wilt
"Whatever else evil is, it is not illusory. We experience the pangs of its impact, not only in an individual sense, but in a cosmic sense. The whole creation groans, we are told by Scripture, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God." - Ligonier
"'comfort' is not the normal way that verb gets translated in the New Testament. Most often, this extremely common verb, parakaleō, gets translated [as] 'encourage,' 'exhort,' or 'urge,' but only rarely as 'comfort.'" - Kenneth Berding
Read Part 1.
My comfort in suffering comes from the knowledge that God ordains my suffering for my eternal good and his glory. It is not enough to say that God allows my suffering. After all, why would God allow something if it wasn’t for the best. For God to allow something would imply that another force of equal or greater power was the actual cause of my suffering. That is clearly not the case. So, the all-wise God must be the prime cause of my suffering, and if He is all-loving and all-powerful, then He ordains it for my good and fully controls it.
Some may ask, how is that comforting??? I am comforted by the truth of God’s all-wise and sovereign ordination of my suffering because I know that none of it is wasted, and I do not suffer one more second than God ordains. Every second of my suffering is precisely what God knows I need to grow in holiness. Romans 5:3-5 reminds us:
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
