Suffering is the gift no one wants, but everyone needs. So let us prayerfully enroll in the school of suffering, expecting to learn valuable lessons along the way.

I love this statement by W. Mackintosh Mackay:

“Experience,’ said a great preacher, ‘teaches fools, but she graduates saints.’ Her graduation ceremony, it must be admitted, is often the close of a long and hard curriculum. If you read the record of our great writers, both secular and sacred, you will be surprised to find of how many of them it was true that they were great sufferers. Of more than poets it is true that ‘they learnt in suffering what they taught in song’. The fragrant name they possess in literature was won out of ‘great tribulation’. The hymns we sing with such comfort to others were born out of bitter hours of pain and disappointment. Our hymnology is largely a martyrology. The men whose words will never die, often died themselves prematurely, or if they lived, lived in what was a living death.” (Expositor’s Dictionary of Texts, v. 2, p. 996)

Just as so many great hymns of the faith, and great men and women of church history, were borne out of suffering, so we can expect trials if we wish to be useful instruments in the Redeemer’s hands. In this week’s lesson we learn…

• How suffering helps us minister to others
• How God redeems our suffering for his good purposes
• The kind of trials we face where comfort is needed
• What’s the difference between a trial and temptation?
• An encouraging reminder that for the believer, all suffering is temporary!

Here’s the audio link:

And here’s a copy of the handout:

Thanks for listening. This is week six in an 11-week biblical counseling class called, “Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands.” To order a Study Guide please click here.