There are lessons God teaches us in the valley that we rarely learn on the mountain top.
I wish that were not true. I wish there were easier ways to learn dependence, humility, endurance, compassion and prayer. I wish sanctification could happen without tears, weakness, sleepless nights, hospital appointments, unanswered questions and bodies that do not work as we want them to. But many of us know, not merely in theory but in experience, that suffering has a way of exposing what we really believe about God.
For me, this is not an abstract theological issue.
Since October 2013, I have lived with chronic pain. What began as a severe migraine that would not go away became a condition called new daily persistent headache. In simple terms, that means constant, unrelenting head pain. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. No day off. No real escape. It affects sleep, energy, concentration, noise, light, ministry, family life and the ordinary rhythms most people rightly take for granted.
I would love to be healed. I still pray for healing. I do not want to pretend that suffering is easy, romantic or somehow less painful if you have good theology. It is not. Pain hurts. Weakness frustrates. Limitations grieve us. Some days the valley feels very dark indeed.
But I can also say this: God has used suffering to teach me lessons I do not think I would have learned otherwise. He has used it to show me my weakness, deepen my dependence, expose my idols, enlarge my compassion, sharpen my hope and drive me again and again to Christ.
That does not mean suffering is good in itself. Suffering entered the world because of sin. Death, disease, pain and decay are enemies. The Bible never asks us to call evil good. But Scripture does teach us that our sovereign God is so wise, so powerful and so gracious that even suffering cannot escape his purposes.
God does not waste our suffering
Romans 8:28 is often quoted, but it must be handled carefully. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” That verse does not say all things are good. Cancer is not good. Chronic pain is not good. Depression is not good. Bereavement is not good. Abuse is not good. The fall is not good.
But God is good.
And God works all things, even the darkest things, for the good of his people.
The next verse tells us what that good is “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). God’s ultimate aim is not merely to make our lives comfortable, successful or pain-free. His purpose is to make us like Jesus. That is both deeply comforting and deeply challenging. It means suffering is not meaningless. It also means God may be doing something in us through suffering that is far more eternal than we can presently see.
That does not remove the pain, but it anchors us in the storm.
Every Christian would do well to have a robust doctrine of providence. We do not believe in a God who is helplessly reacting to the events of our lives. We believe in the God who “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). Not some things. Not only the pleasant things. All things.
That truth can be hard to receive when the pain is raw. But over time, it becomes a pillow on which the weary soul can rest. My suffering is not outside God’s control. My illness has not slipped through his fingers. My weakness has not surprised him. The God who numbers the hairs of my head also knows every throb of pain in it.
Suffering teaches us that we are weak
One of the hardest lessons suffering teaches is also one of the most necessary, that we are weak. Of course, we say that already. We sing it. We preach it. We confess it. But suffering makes us feel it.
Before suffering comes, we can subtly believe that we are strong, capable and in control. We plan our lives, organise our diaries, set our goals and assume our bodies will carry us through. Then illness arrives. Or grief. Or burnout. Or opposition. Or disappointment. Suddenly, the illusion of control is stripped away.
Paul describes believers as “jars of clay” carrying the treasure of the gospel, “to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Corinthians 4:7). That image is wonderfully humbling. A jar of clay is fragile, ordinary and easily cracked. That is what we are. But God delights to place the treasure of Christ in weak vessels so that the glory belongs to him.
Suffering reminds us that we are not the Messiah. Pastors need that lesson too. Perhaps pastors especially need that lesson. We are not omnipotent. We are not omnipresent. We are not indispensable. We are sheep before we are shepherds. We are dependent children before we are ministers of the Word.
Weakness is painful, but it can also be freeing. When suffering brings us to the end of ourselves, we discover that Christ was never asking us to be sufficient. He is sufficient. His grace is sufficient. His power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Suffering teaches us to pray
There are prayers that are formed in suffering which rarely grow in comfort.
Suffering teaches us to pray honestly. Not polished prayers. Not impressive prayers. Not prayers designed to make us sound spiritually mature. Real prayers. Desperate prayers. Groaning prayers. Prayers that sound like the Psalms.
“How long, O LORD?”
“Why, O LORD, do you stand far away?”
“Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD!”
The Bible gives sufferers language for both faith and lament. God does not rebuke his people for crying out to him. He invites it. The Psalms teach us that godly faith is not stoic silence. Faith brings sorrow into the presence of God.
Suffering has taught me to pray because suffering has taught me that I cannot sustain myself. I need daily grace. I need strength for today, not imaginary strength for the next ten years. I need mercy for this sermon, this pastoral visit, this conversation, this sleepless night, this moment of discouragement.
Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). Suffering makes that prayer precious. It teaches us to stop living on imagined future reserves and to receive today’s grace from our Father’s hand.
Suffering sanctifies us
James writes, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2). That is a staggering command. James does not say trials are enjoyable. He does not say Christians should enjoy pain. He says we can count trials as joy because we know God is doing something through them: “the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” (James 1:3).
Suffering tests faith. It reveals whether our confidence in God depends on circumstances going well. It exposes the difference between loving God for his gifts and loving God for himself.
That exposure can be uncomfortable. Suffering can reveal impatience, anger, self-pity, pride, envy and unbelief. It can show us how much we crave ease, recognition, productivity and control. But this exposure is not God’s cruelty. It is part of his fatherly care.
Hebrews 12 tells us that the Lord disciplines those he loves. That discipline is not punishment for our sins, Christ has borne that fully at the cross. Rather, it is the loving training of a Father who is committed to our holiness. “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).
Notice that word, trained.
Suffering trains us. Slowly. Painfully. Often invisibly. But God uses it to produce fruit that ease rarely grows.
Suffering makes us long for heaven
One of the great dangers of comfort is that it can make this world feel like home. Suffering has a way of reminding us that it is not.
Paul says, “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). That verse has become deeply precious to me. The outer self may be wasting away. The body may be weak. The pain may remain. But God is renewing his people inwardly, day by day.
And he is preparing for us “an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17).
Christian hope is not vague optimism. It is not pretending things will definitely improve in this life. They might. They might not. Some illnesses are healed now. Some are not. Some griefs soften over time. Some wounds remain tender until glory.
But the Christian’s final hope is resurrection.
One day Christ will return. One day the dead will be raised. One day every tear will be wiped away. One day pain will be no more. One day faith will become sight. One day the weak, frail, suffering bodies of God’s people will be transformed to be like Christ’s glorious body.
That hope does not make suffering easy, but it does make suffering temporary.
Suffering helps us comfort others
God also uses suffering to make us more compassionate.
Paul writes that God “comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction” (2 Corinthians 1:4). The comfort God gives us is not meant to terminate on us. It equips us to sit with others in their sorrow.
Suffering does not automatically make someone gentle, wise or compassionate. Pain can make us bitter. But when suffering drives us to Christ, it can tenderise us. It can make us slower to speak and quicker to listen. It can make us less likely to offer clichés. It can teach us the ministry of presence, tears and patient prayer.
As a pastor, I do not want to waste that lesson. My suffering does not make me a better Christian than anyone else. It does not make me an expert in everyone else’s pain. But it has helped me understand something of weakness, limitation and lament from the inside. It has helped me see that people do not usually need quick answers as much as they need deep truths spoken with tears, patience and love.
Suffering points us to Christ
Ultimately, suffering teaches us because it drives us to the Man of Sorrows.
We do not have a Saviour who stands far off from pain. The eternal Son of God took on flesh. He knew hunger, tiredness, grief, betrayal, mockery, injustice and agony. He wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He sweat drops of blood in Gethsemane. He cried out in dereliction at Calvary.
And his suffering was unlike any other suffering. Christ did not merely suffer physically. He bore the wrath of God in the place of sinners. He suffered as the substitute for his people. “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5).
That means my suffering is not payment for my sin. Christ has paid it all. My pain is not divine condemnation. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).
When I suffer, I look to the cross and remember that God has not abandoned me. The cross proves the opposite. God has loved me at infinite cost to himself. If he gave his own Son for me, I can trust him even when I cannot trace what he is doing.
What should we do with our suffering?
We should not pretend it does not hurt. We should not rush to neat answers. We should not feel guilty for praying for relief. We should use the ordinary means God provides: doctors, medicine, rest, friendship, counselling where needed, and the loving care of the church.
But above all, we should bring our suffering to Christ.
Bring him your questions. Bring him your tears. Bring him your weakness. Bring him your frustration. Bring him your disappointed plans. Bring him your weary body and your discouraged heart.
And ask him to do what only he can do: sustain you, sanctify you, deepen your faith, and help you endure.
I would still love to be free from pain. I still pray for healing. But I do not want to waste what God is teaching me in the valley. If suffering makes me depend more on Christ, then even in the darkness, God is at work.
Suffering does not mean God has left you.
It may be the very place where he teaches you to lean more fully on the Saviour who will never leave you nor forsake you.
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