Suffering is consecrated to God by faith—not by faith in suffering, but by faith in God. Suffering is a byproduct of living in a fallen world. Sometimes we are are cause of our own suffering and other times we are the victims; however, there is value in our suffering, regardless of how it’s produced. The value in suffering is not in the pain itself, but in the faith produced by it. Suffering can be surrendered to God only when we believe that God will redeem it and bring good from it.; the suffering itself is meaningless, otherwise.
No Christian enjoys the pain and suffering that is experienced in their valleys, but when God is found there as the source for strength and endurance, God’s glory abounds. When Job lost all that he had, his immediate response was to turn to God. Like Job, we may never know why we suffer, but we can come to the same conclusion as him, “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him” (Job 13:5). God doesn’t abandon us in our pain, rather, He is in us feeling it all, as we partake in the fellowship of His suffering “that we might know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10). This is the process of growing in grace where by God transforms our thinking and choosing to His. Pain and suffering are the tools that God uses to bring this about in the lives of His children.
All the wrong thinking and behaviors that follow are sifted out through the crucible of suffering, because our soul has not been made perfect yet, as has our spirit. As we seek God’s grace in our pain, walk in the Spirit, our souls are impacted by the sacred presence of the Living God within our deepest selves. What results is the spirit and soul of man rests in the holiness of who he is and who God is.