People tell me they could never accept a God who would allow such suffering in the world.

Some of these same people have commented on how starved our world is of love and yet God doesn't seem to care.

As my pastor recently pointed out, "We know the world isn't dying for love; the world's dying in spite of the greatest love anybody could ever know."

The Apostle Paul tells us, "God commended His love toward us that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us."

The other week on TV, I caught the very tail end of an interview with Julie Andrews in which she was talking about how much she had matured as a result of her struggle with throat cancer and how, because of all that she gained from the experience, she wouldn't want to trade it. She said she had a much deeper love and appreciation for her family and was much more clear on what matters in life and what has no real meaning.

Also on TV recently, I watched an episode of the PBS travel series, Globe Trekkers, filmed in Egypt, in which the show host interviewed a hermit who was living miles from anyone, embedded in a hillside deep in the desert.

The tall, skinny, middle-aged man with a long graying beard seemed only to want to talk about his faith in Jesus Christ. When asked what led him into the wilderness, he explained that he had always been an atheist until his mother died, and then he turned to Christ and changed his life. Through the loss of his mother, he explained, "I realized suffering is purifying."

Believers through the ages have attested to how the trials and tribulations of their lives either led them to Christ or made them lean on Him all the more closely.

One of my favorite hymns dating from childhood, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus"—

which goes, in part, "Can we find a friend so faithful, who will all our sorrows share?"—

was actually written by a man, Joseph Scriven, who never intended his words to be put to music.

The text for the well-beloved song from 1857 was originally part of a letter of comfort Scriven wrote to his mother upon learning she had a serious illness but knowing he could not be with her since he was in Canada and she was in Dublin.

Another great old hymn, "Safe in the Arms of Jesus," which includes the line, "Free from the blight of sorrow, Free from my doubts and fears; only a few more trials, only a few more tears. . .", was one of more than 9,000 spiritual songs written by Fanny Crosby, who was blinded for life at two months of age in 1825 when a man falsely claiming to be a doctor treated an illness of hers with hot mustard poultices applied to her eyes.

Crosby, who would go on to such success she was personally acquainted with all the U.S. presidents of her lifetime of 95 years, lost her father only a few months after going blind. Her mother was forced to take a job as a maid, leaving Crosby to be raised by her Christian grandmother.

Her first attempt at verse, at age 8, reflected her lifelong refusal to engage in self-pity:

Oh, what a happy soul I am,

Although I cannot see!

I am resolved that in this world

Contented I will be.

How many blessings I enjoy

That other people don't,

To weep and sigh because I'm blind

I cannot, and I won't!

Also as a child, Crosby zealously memorized the Bible and could recite the Pentateuch, the Gospels, Proverbs, the Song of Solomon and many of the psalms.

In a recent sermon, my pastor, Richard Jordan (Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill.), made the observation that personal suffering is exactly what makes the Bible appealing to an individual.

He said, "You go through some difficult times, you get down, and, you know, you're on your back looking up, and I've asked myself this question many times: 'Why would I want to know about all this information if I never had a time in life when I needed it and could see it live in me?' All of a sudden, when you think about it that way, the tribulation isn't tribulation so much."

Paul says in Rom. 5: 3-4, "We glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope."

Trouble's not to be a curse, but a circumstantial context in which God works in a Believer's life. God uses our circumstances and surroundings as a context in which to apply sound doctrine.

"It's like your life is a stage," explains Jordan. "All of life is a stage you've heard the bard say. You don't go out on the stage and find God's will. You find God's will in His Word. You hide His Word in your heart and you go out on the stage of life and you apply His Word to your life. Our circumstances and our feelings are not means of divine revelation. Learning to apply God's will, I begin to grow. I apply the doctrine to life and it begins to work in me."

It's the trying of our faith that works patience. The problems of life say, "Are you going to rest in who you are in Christ or are you going to go on your devices?"

"What trouble tests is your resolve to walk by faith," says Jordan. "It tests whether or not you're going to stay with the doctrine—stay with your identity in Christ—or you're going to go on your emotions, or other counsel."

Tribulation is designed to teach us that if we stay with the doctrine (and that's where patience comes in), that staying with the doctrine works experience. Patience comes from the experiences of life and we develop a persistent fortitude and unwavering endurance by just sticking by the Word, Jordan explains.

"And when you stay with it, and stay with it. and stay with it, in spite of the circumstances—meaning you say, 'This is the truth, I'm not going to walk by sight, I'm going to walk by faith'— you get some experience," he says. "Experience is simply skill in handling a problem. Experience comes when you face the problem, deal with the problem, and it comes to a successful conclusion."

In II Cor. 1:3-4, Paul tells us God is "the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God."

The idea is that the experience gained through tribulation lends an enhanced capacity of maturity to effectively help and comfort others by giving them some of the hope we've gained through our experience. It's about a maturing process.

"The justice of God can give you peace, but it can't give you patience," says Jordan. "He can give you access, but He can't give you experience. Patience comes from the life application of the sound doctrine."

Paul writes in Gal. 2:20, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."

"Paul says the only thing you're ever going to learn in your Christian life—you just learn it at different levels—is 'it's not I, but Christ,' " explains Jordan. "You see, when he says, 'You're complete in Christ,' you can't get God to give you any more. You can't say, 'Oh, God, give me some more of this or that.' He's got no more to give you. He gave it to you already. All you can do is appropriate what He already gave you and to appropriate it, you've got to do two things. One, you've got to know about it, and two, you've got to need it."

Life is made up of attitudes and actions.

"You go out in life and it doesn't take long before you know you need something bigger than you to take care of the way you act and your attitudes about life, and it's going to be Christ, His life," says Jordan. "It's sort of a partnership in maturity, in wisdom, and it comes progressively as you grow spiritually. This is just the process of growing up spiritually."

Through the tribulations, Believers are to reach a level of maturity where nothing motivates them but the love of God in Christ Jesus. That's why Paul says, "The love of Christ constrains us."

Through this maturing, says Jordan, "You're willing just to relax and not be motivated by a desire to make God happy with you so that He'll accept you and bless you. You're not motivated by being a big shot and showing everybody what you know. The thing that loves lets you do is relax."

As Paul assures in II Cor. 4:14, "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

Life is designed to be a walk of faith and the things we endure down here on earth right now builds a capacity in our inner man that will last forever. The suffering is what makes us stronger in the Lord.