It was a Saturday evening when I fell off the ladder and onto our concrete floor. My right foot was swollen like a balloon, and the pain was significant. My wife whisked me off to the emergency room, where I found my right heel bone had shattered. The only remedy was surgery. I was unable to do any weight bearing on the right foot; I had to learn to use crutches. It wasn’t long before I was questioning God about why He had allowed me to go through suffering. But it was good preparation for adoption.

            I have never been persecuted for my faith in Jesus Christ, but I have known some who have been. I know some were tempted to think God had abandoned them because of the immense suffering they were enduring. Did God still love them, and yet let them suffer? Does their pain serve any good at all?

            We were unprepared for the first years of our adoption. Our children learned quickly how to “push all our buttons.” They did not believe or accept our love for them. It seemed they wanted to hurt us the same way they had been hurt by their birth family. This emotional suffering sometimes left us frazzled, and often caused us to drop to our knees in prayer, asking the Heavenly Father for relief.

            Peter knew what suffering was as well. First-century Christians were being persecuted and martyred by Rome for refusing to proclaim Caesar as a god. This was the setting in which Peter wrote his first letter to those believers in Jesus Christ. This epistle is covered with Peter’s exhortations about suffering and its purposes. He even makes the surprising statement that suffering is a gracious gift (1 Peter 2:19-20) and a blessing from God for them (1 Peter 3:14)!

            The most important statement that Peter makes is that we are to imitate the character of Jesus Christ when we suffer (1 Peter 2:21-23), revealing that the Holy Spirit is working in our lives (1 Peter 4:13-14). If that were not enough, Peter reminds us of the effects of suffering in the life of the believer in Jesus Christ—to cause us to stop yielding to temptation (1 Peter 4:1-2) and to show the genuineness of our faith (1 Peter 1:7). He caps this off by reminding his readers that after they have suffered, God will perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish them (1 Peter 5:10). In short, suffering is good for us!

            We watched our mischievous little boys slowly become wise men. They had to learn from the consequences of their bad choices. But we were able to witness firsthand their growth both outwardly and inwardly. And the day came when they both believed that we really loved them.

            God has adopted us as well, and is in the process of grinding away our narcissism and causing us to love and appreciate Him more. Instead of always wanting a God who gives us what we want, we discover we have been adopted by a God who gives us what we need. He uses suffering in our lives to make us more like Jesus Christ and to peel away the idols in our lives.

            What suffering have you experienced? What suffering are you going through right now? Are you willing to release this back to your loving Heavenly Father and acknowledge that He has a plan for your life? Feel free to comment in the comment box following this blog.