Dear friends do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come upon you

to test you as though something strange were happening to you.

But in as much as you participate in the sufferings of Christ

so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.

Friends, welcome back to the Ransom Heart Podcast.

John Eldridge here this week with Bart Hanson and Stacy Burton on our team picking up the second part of a

conversation and so if you're just tuning in right now you might want to go back

and start with part one that'll make a lot more sense to you.

But we are talking about the need for a mature perspective of suffering

so that we can find God and find his resources in it.

And in the first episode Bart and Stacy and I shared something of the reality of some pretty hard suffering that we've been through.

And dear friends, I know it's so easy to look at other people's lives and think that they

have it better or they've figured it out.

They've figured parenting out or they've figured their finances out or something, but honestly,

if you were to go around the whole staff at Ransom Heart, you could hear some pretty heartbreaking stories.

You can.

Beautiful stories of God.

Incredible stories of breakthrough as well, but we're just trying to shed some light on this and

take some of the shame off it, take some of the bad theology out so that we can find

God and find the provisions that he does have for us.

So I was thinking about this.

I was flipping to the Book of Revelation.

...