Lesson 12: Response to suffering - understanding
Colossians 1:24-26 (ESV)
24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,
25 of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known,
26 the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints.

Another response God wants us to have to suffering is that we begin to understand – we understand not only why we suffer, but we understand how God is working in our lives. We read in 2 Peter 3:18 that God wants us to grow in grace and in knowledge of Jesus. Such knowledge cannot be just in our head, it must also be in our heart, and when it is in our heart it becomes understanding. If we look a few verses earlier in this same book, chapter 1 verse 5, we read that God wants us to supplement our faith with a couple of things. He says we should supplement our faith with virtue, and virtue here means good character. Then we are to supplement good character with knowledge. We can read many places in the Bible where knowledge is good as long as we seek knowledge of the right thing – knowledge of God. Remember, Satan tempted Adam and Eve with knowledge, the wrong kind of knowledge, in the Garden of Eden, and that temptation led to sin. In Psalm 111:10 we find the source of good knowledge – the fear (respect, honor) of the Lord – and such knowledge or wisdom gives those who possess it a good understanding.


To knowledge we are to add self-control, and to self-control we are to add patience. To patience, then, we add godliness, and finally to godliness we add love.

As we saw in a previous lesson, faith and patience go hand-in-hand, but the thing that holds those two together is heart-knowledge – understanding.

There will be some things in this life we cannot understand. For example, we cannot understand at times why certain things happen in our lives. But this we can understand, because it is a promise of God to us: He has a perfect plan in place for our life, and for that plan He will always weave every event in our life into a tapestry of good for us. No matter how impossible that seems in the moment when we experience something bad, we can count on His promise. When we make that understanding a firm foundation in our life we will find that knowing why something happened is not as important as it may once have been. We may not know the WHY, but we do know the WHO!

*As you have been suffering, how far has God brought you (up to this point) in these steps of virtues: good character, knowledge, self-control, patience, godliness, love?
*How does understanding some of the purposes God may have for your suffering encourage you today?