Lesson 9: Purpose of suffering – our maturity in Christ
James 1:2-4 (ESV)
2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,
3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Romans 5:3-5 (ESV)
3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,
5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

One of the truly amazing things about God, in our suffering, is that He can use our suffering to make us mature Christians. We see this in both of the Scriptures above. The first Scripture gives us a short pattern of how we mature – we are told faith grows us in steadfastness (that means loyalty, faithfulness, trustworthiness, reliability, dependability, persistence, determination, and so on).

Verse 4 in the James passage says we must let steadfastness have its full effect in our life, and the Romans passage above gives us more detail about what this steadfastness looks like. It starts with endurance. How many of us get impatient for God to do something for us when we’re suffering? God doesn’t want us to be impatient, He wants us to endure, He wants us to walk with Him through the Valley we’re in (Psalm 23:4) rather than hurrying past what He wants to teach us.


Endurance produces good character in us. This good character is some of those things in our life named above – loyalty, faithfulness, dependability, and so on. Have you noticed that it’s hard to be loyal or faithful or dependable when you are impatient?

Good character produces hope in us. This is not the kind of hope that means we wish something were true, it is a hope that means I know it’s true, I’m just waiting for it to happen. Hope is patient. We find this same thing said of true love in 1 Corinthians 13 – love is patient.

We also find patience listed in Galatians 5:22-23 where we read about the fruit that is produced in us through the Holy Spirit. Isn’t it interesting that the word for patience is also long-suffering in some Bibles? Patience is one of the key elements in faith, we cannot truly have faith in God without also being able to wait for His time. Faith takes time to grow, and there is nothing like suffering to teach us patience.

*How does this lesson encourage you to ask God to give you His patience as you suffer instead of being impatient for your suffering to end?
*How has God brought you to the place where you’ve actually rejoiced in your suffering?