God uses the stories of Jonah, Job and Paul to teach us that if we do not learn from the Scriptures who God is and allow ourselves to follow Him, God will let us suffer to convince us.

God created us free to choose between His way and our own or the world’s way. Our bad choices lead to three different reasons for suffering: as a natural consequence of the choice, as when you put your hand on a hot stove, it burns, or Samson’s choosing to trust Delilah; as punishment for willfully disobeying Him, as any good father does, and as He did in taking David and Bathsheba’s first child; and as a consequence of other people’s sin, as the children who suffer when their parents sin and the family of Achan who die with him.

God works through suffering to change people. When we have nowhere else to turn, we turn to God. He will let us suffer if that is what it takes to get us to turn to and trust Him. He not only wants us to turn to Him, He wants to transform us into Jesus’ image. We need to die with Christ to be reborn in Him. Just as knowing how the Lord suffered can comfort us, so also God allows us to suffer so that we may help others through similar suffering.

When God is glorified through people’s suffering, God may show His glory in two ways and nonbelievers will be brought to faith through both ways. God shows His glory in both allowing suffering, as He did with the people of Og when the Israelites were wandering in the desert, and in alleviating suffering, as He did when our Lord raised Lazarus. Unbelieving witnesses may be brought to faith, as was Rahab who had heard of the destruction of Og, and the neighbors of Lazarus who knew he had been dead for four days. The testimony of David and of the apostles in Acts and the epistles show that nonbelievers can also be brought to faith by the courage and testimony of believers whom God has sustained through suffering.

Another reason God says He lets us suffer is that the pain we endure in this life serves as a contrast to the eternal joy of being with Him that awaits us.

The last chapter moves from the faith that the Bible is His Word to trusting that Word, to the joy in suffering that the apostles knew.

There are two more reasons, not covered in this printing: Some suffer because God works through people to fulfill His plan for mankind’s salvation. Joseph had to be sold into slavery to save his family; Jesus had to die to cleanse us of our sin, and six million Jews had to die to create modern Israel. Finally, there will be suffering throughout the world through both nature and man, as a harbinger of His return.

View a comprehensive chapter outline of Why God Lets People Suffer

You may order an inscribed autographed copy of Why God Lets People Suffer from His Truth Ministries.  The book is also available from directly from the publisher, Magnus Press or from amazon.com, and is carried by many Christian bookstores.