09/16/2026
I just wanted to share something the Holy Spirit brought me to. 
To suffer means to feel physical or mental pain, or to experience something unpleasant, damaged, or broken.
Pathēmata is the word that was used in Scripture for suffering.
Pathēmata: sufferings, hardships, afflictions, or things one undergoes or experiences.
Sometimes suffering for Christ doesn’t always look like being persecuted.
Sometimes suffering is being weighed down with burdens, enduring warfare, living paycheck to paycheck, being an exhausted parent, being talked badly about and not saying anything, and so many other things.
We forget that we do these things for Christ.
We suffer well, and we lean on Him through the suffering.
Sometimes it is our attempt to carry that suffering in our own strength that leads us into depression, anxiety, and hopelessness. We were never created to carry the weight of this world on our own.
We’re not supposed to carry the burdens for as long as we possibly can and then finally give them to Jesus when we can’t take anymore.
I am so guilty of doing this!
We are called to give them to Him immediately.
We surrender them to Him and find comfort in Him, because He is the only one who can carry the weight of the burdens of this world.
That doesn’t mean we cower down, in defeat, to the suffering. It means we die to ourselves and find our strength in Christ.
We don’t just live in the grief or the pain. We find confidence in Jesus.
We find joy in Jesus.
We find peace in Jesus.
We continue to be a beacon of comfort to others through Jesus.
All because we suffer well.
So many people believe the lie that because we live in a fallen world and there is so much suffering, we will always be sad, hurt, or depressed.
We believe the lie that says, “It will always be this way.”
Or we believe the lie that we have to numb ourselves to the suffering of this world.
But what if the suffering is the very thing that brings us to the feet of Jesus?
What if the suffering is what brings us into everything He has in store for us?
What if that very suffering is the suffering that will bring comfort to somebody else?
“For the more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with his comfort through Christ.”
2 Corinthians 1:5
