I was working on a new article examining the turmoil in Israel when TV coverage of Hurricane Katrina captivated my attention Monday morning.

Having just visited New Orleans, Gulfport, Biloxi, Mobile and other nearby points two years ago—even parking my rental car off Highway 90 in Biloxi to wake up to a February sunrise on the Gulf beachfront—made the unfolding catastrophe that much more engrossing and heart-wrenching at the same time.

Of course, one of the big questions whenever something like this happens is, "Why does God allow suffering?

Part of the answer, as unconsoling as it might be, is that we live in a fallen creation cursed by sin. Because of man's sin, as the Apostle Paul tells us, the world is held in "the bondage of corruption." (Rom. 8:21)

"This is the reason there are calamities and unexplained horrors about us," explains my pastor, Richard Jordan of Shorewood Bible Church in Rolling Meadows, Ill. (www.graceimpact.org), in an old issue of his newsletter, The Grace Journal. "If the Lord tarries, we are going to get sick, suffer pain and eventually die. Why? It's not because God doesn't love us or have our best interest at heart. Far from it. Rather, this is the common lot of all creation until Christ returns to deliver creation into His Kingdom glory."

One of the most quoted passages in all of Paul's writings comforts the Believer with these words:

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
"As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
"Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
"Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. 8:35-39)

While Believers continue to abide faithfully in an increasingly sin-decayed world, the Body of Christ gains more and more members and that's precisely why God allows things to keep going as they are in this Grace Age (preceding the Tribulation in which God's wrath is unleashed on all those remaining post-Rapture).

The key is being equipped with Scripture to fortify the inner man in times of tribulation. That's why "rightly dividing" the Word, knowing the ins and outs of change in program since Israel's "fall," is crucial.

"An old-timer said, 'If you've got Light, you can go through anything,' and that's true," says Jordan in a sermon I have on tape. "You see, if you can understand why something's happening you have a fortification internally that gives you stability."

As Jordan frequently reminds his congregation, "Our ace in the hole is it's just glory in the end."

The trials in life make that glory all that much sweeter in the end. By having this outlook on sufferings, Paul says, we can, in fact, rejoice in tribulation, knowing that tribulation works for us and produces beneficial things. (Rom. 5:3)

Paul says, "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."

When you have sound doctrine literally built up in your soul, that doctrine gets magnified in times of trouble and has an accelerated productive capacity for good.

"Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory," says Paul in II Cor. 4:17.

We have something "far better," as Paul says, than any healing program or deliverance from pain and suffering through "name it and claim it," as Pentecostals believe in vain by falsely applying Scripture.

"The history of creation can be set forth in three parts: first, God said it was good and then, because of the fall of man, he cursed it and it has been groaning ever since," writes Jordan in his newsletter, referring to Paul's affirmation that the "whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." (Rom. 8:22)

"One day it will be glorious, having been delivered from the bondage of corruption by the return of Jesus Christ. We currently live in the groaning stage."