Thanks for joining us today on the Ask Paul Trip podcast. My name is Ben Fallon, the executive director of Paul Trip Ministries, and I want to remind you to send us your questions.

Email ask at paultrip.com or submit it online at paultrip.com slash ask.

Paul, today's question comes from Amy, who's a biblical counselor.

She asks, if the pain and suffering in this life are meant to make us long for paradise,

what do you tell a Christian who has endured and is enduring so much suffering and trauma

that all they want is to be with Jesus and are considering taking their life so they can. As a counselor,

this has been one of the toughest ones for me. I have talked about God's sovereignty and plan

for their lives and how He has ordained our days, and if they're still on this earth, God still has a

plan and purpose for them here. But when the very thing that's supposed to offer hope to a suffering

believer ends up being the thing that quite possibly makes everything worse, what do you say?

One of the things I always say about suffering, and I think it's very, very important to get a hold of this, is that you don't just suffer the thing that you're suffering.

You also suffer often the way that you're suffering, you also suffer often the way that you're

suffering. It's completely untrue that suffering is a passive experience. We think, do, and say

things that shape our own suffering.

So that means that thinking biblically about suffering is incredibly important because I think that so much I wrote a book about suffering called suffering

to interact with this whole experience.

I want to say I don't, I'm not doing that in the abstract.

My life in the last 10 years has been one of suffering,

and I still live with a broken body and pain every day and so i i get the unrelenting nature of suffering

the bible says that there are three purposes in suffering.

First, I suffer because I'm in a fallen world.

I, by God's plan, between the all right of my conversion,

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