God Is Present When His People Suffer

God never promises that we can live the Christian life without difficulty, without peril, without danger, without suffering, without calamity. It drives me crazy when I hear these television preachers stand up there and promise that if the Christian just has enough faith, they’ll never suffer, they’ll never be sick, they’ll never experience death, and all that sort of thing, because it’s simply not true.

The Bible repeatedly describes the history of God’s people as a suffering people. And as I’ve said many times, Jesus not only says that suffering is possible for His people, but it is certain. In the world, you will have tribulation. You will have affliction. You will have pain and grief and all of these things—so that we don’t ever have an absolute promise from God to have a life free of suffering, or free of death, or free of peril or danger. What God does promise categorically, and what He does promise absolutely to us through Jesus, is His presence, “I will be with you,” and the negative, “I will not forsake you.”