Suffering isn’t meaningless—it’s God’s most powerful tool for shaping us into the image of Christ.
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada. You know, instinctively, we all want to get rid of suffering. It’s unpleasant, painful, inconvenient. Most of us would love to erase suffering out of the dictionary. We do all we can to medicate it, avoid it, escape it, drug it, divorce it, surgically eradicate it, do everything but actually live with it. But that’s what God wants us to do. If he does not heal it, or remove us from our painful circumstance, then he wants to pour out his abundant grace so that we can live with it. It’s because suffering is God’s choicest tool to mold us into Christ’s image. Suffering also purges sin and self-centeredness out of our lives. Suffering refines our faith. It binds us together with other believers. But best of all, suffering is where we can truly identify with Jesus on the cross, the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief. And please, friend, today, do not erase that out of the dictionary.
© Joni and Friends