Today we're pleased to share with you an audio essay written and read by Mark Talbot,

entitled Four Questions About Our Suffering.

Mark's new book is called Give Me Understanding that I May Live,

situating our suffering within God's redemptive plan from Crossway.

Four questions about our suffering, written and read by Mark Talbot.

First question, why are we to rejoice in our suffering?

Several New Testament passages report the joy our Lord's first followers felt when they suffered.

Several others tell us that as Jesus' followers, we should, indeed, we must rejoice, be glad,

and consider ourselves blessed when we suffer,

or undergo persecution, trials, or any other sort of difficulties.

But undergoing these things is by its very nature unpleasant, and in fact suffering can be

defined as experiencing something that is unpleasant enough

that we wanted to end. So why are we to rejoice in our suffering? It's because we are to possess

the mind of Christ, who even though he was God, emptied himself to become a human being so that he could suffer and die for our sins.

During his earthly lifetime, his disciples had rejected his claim that he as the one whom they had become convinced was the Messiah

sent to redeem Israel, would have to suffer and die.

When he died, his death seemed to clinch the fact that he was not the promised one.

But his resurrection changed everything, convincing them that the way to everlasting life does not go around suffering and death, but through them.

Jesus' first followers rejoiced in their suffering because it assured them that they were following in his footsteps. Very early in his earthly ministry,

Jesus had told them, blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of

evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven,

for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. And so Luke tells us that early in the

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