The (Spiritual) Health Benefits of Suffering

Eat your friggin vegetables.

Comfort is a TERRIBLE discipleship strategy.

That thought has been following me around lately like a mosquito. And the more I look at history, the more I know it is true.

The Church, the big-C Church, the Bride of Christ across time and continents, has often been at her strongest when she is surrounded by suffering.

Not when she is trendy.

Not when she is politically safe.

Not when she is rich, comfortable, and endlessly obsessed with herself…

She is strongest when She suffers.

Total damsel-in-distress mode.

Look at the early Christians.

They did not build the Church with ease. They built it with blood in the ground. Songs in the night. They were mocked, hunted, imprisoned, burned, fed to beasts, and still they would not shut up about Jesus. That kind of faith was not casual. It was not cultural. It was not the kind of Christianity you keep around because your parents liked it and the coffee and donuts are free.

It was real.

And real faith usually gets tested in fire.

That is the pattern that keeps showing up. When the Church is pressed, purified, and forced to decide whether Jesus is actually worth it, she gets strangely clear. Suddenly the fluff burns off. The games look silly. The fake stuff cannot survive. You do not play church very long when following Christ can cost you something.

Suffering has a way of exposing what comfort lets us hide.

That is true in history, and I think it is true in culture too.

A lot of the spiritual strength that shaped the generations before us did not come out of nowhere. Many of them were raised by people who had seen literal hell break loose in the real world. War. Loss. Scarcity. Fear. Graves. They knew life was fragile. They knew evil was not a theory. They knew they were not in control.

And people who know they are not in control tend to pray better.

Then, at least in America, we got used to peace. Or at least our version of peace. A long stretch of relative comfort. Bigger houses. Better technology. More entertainment. More convenience.

Big-Macs and Bluetooth.

More ways to avoid silence. More ways to avoid pain. More ways to avoid God while still claiming we are “spiritual.”

We got soft in all the places that matter most.

I’m not saying there were no wars.

There were. There was Vietnam. There was Iraq. There were plenty of tragedies and national wounds. I am not pretending the last century was one long youth camp. But broadly speaking, many people were still insulated enough to believe that life should mostly feel manageable.

That illusion has done serious damage.

Because when a generation grows up thinking comfort is normal, suffering feels like a scandal instead of a teacher. The moment life gets dark, faith feels broken. People start asking, “Why would God let this happen?” when the saints before us would have asked, “Lord, how do I stay faithful here?”

Those are very different questions.

One expects God to keep life smooth.

The other expects God to be present in the storm.

And this is where I think younger generations are standing right now.

We may not be drafted into the same wars our great-grandparents saw, but do not tell me we are not suffering. Look around. Anxiety is everywhere. Depression is common. Loneliness is rampant. Families are fractured. Attention spans are shattered. We are over-informed, under-formed, and half-drowning in a sea of constant noise. We have more connection than ever and somehow less communion. More content and less meaning. More outrage and less backbone.

We are not okay.

And maybe that is exactly why so many young people are quietly turning back toward seriousness.

Not shallow religion.

Not cheesy slogans.

Not fog machines pretending to be the Holy Spirit.

Serious faith.

A faith sturdy enough to survive a war. A funeral. Thanksgiving with uncle Ned.

A faith honest enough to speak in lament.

A faith with a cross in the middle of it, not just a cute little inspirational quote slapped on top.

Because once suffering gets personal, the nonsense stops working.

Isn’t that funny?

That is true globally. It is true culturally. And it is painfully true in our own personal lives.

Sometimes it takes a pitch-black pit for us to notice the faint light we wandered away from.

That is not because God is cruel. It’s we who wander.

It is because God is gracious. And suffering has a way of stripping us down to what is real.

When life is easy, it is frighteningly possible to drift from God and still feel fine about it. You can stay busy. You can stay amused. You can stay numbed out. You can baptize your distractions and call them peace. You can mistake a comfortable life for a faithful one.

But suffering ruins all that.

Suffering makes you tell the truth.

You suddenly find words for prayer that you did not have before. Or maybe prayer becomes less polished and more desperate. Less performance and more groaning. Less “God, bless my plans” and more “God, if You do not hold me together, I am done.”

That kind of prayer is ugly.

It is also often the beginning of wisdom.

This is why the New Testament talks the way it does about suffering. Not because Christians are supposed to enjoy pain like maniacs. Not because persecution is fun. Not because grief is somehow cute and spiritual. The Bible is not asking us to smile through trauma like lunatics.

It is saying that suffering is one of the places where God becomes unmistakably near.

“Blessed are you when others revile you,” Jesus says.

Paul says we rejoice in suffering because suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

James says to count it joy when trials come because testing does something to us.

Not around us.

To us.

Suffering is not holy because pain itself is good.

Suffering becomes holy ground because God meets people there.

That is the mystery.

And I think I understand it better now than I used to.

We rejoice in suffering, not because suffering is beautiful, but because God does some of His clearest work there. He cuts through our pride there. He exposes our idols there. He teaches us to lament there. He reminds us that we are not self-sustaining there. He proves that His presence is not dependent on our comfort there.

You learn things in suffering that comfort will never teach you.

Which means the goal is not to chase suffering.

The goal is not to romanticize hardship.

The goal is not to become one of those weird Christians who acts like every terrible thing is automatically wonderful.

The goal is to stop treating suffering like the absence of God.

Sometimes suffering is where His voice gets loudest.

And maybe this is a word for you specifically right now.

You do not need a more entertaining gospel.

You need a sturdier one.

You do not need leaders who promise you a painless life.

You need shepherds who can tell the truth about the cross and still talk about resurrection without sounding fake.

The future of the Church will not be built by people who are impressed with themselves.

It will be built by saints who know how to bleed without bowing.

By believers who know how to lament without losing hope.

By Christians who stop asking whether Jesus is still worthy when life gets hard.

He is.

He always has been.

In fact, history would suggest that when the night gets darker, the Church starts shining brighter.

Not because Christians are strong.

Because Christ is. And He takes care of His Lady.

- Ross

• Romans 5:3–5

• James 1:2–4

• 2 Corinthians 1:8–9

• Psalm 34:18

• Psalm 42:1–3

• Lamentations 3:19–23

• 1 Peter 4:12–13

• Hebrews 12:10–11