Welcome to the Gospel Coalition podcast, where we help to renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel.

Today's podcast is a talk by Ligand Duncan about lessons on suffering from the Puritans.

It was recorded at our 2025 national conference.

My name is Ligin Duncan. I serve on the council and the board of the gospel coalition.

And my day job is to work as a chancellor and professor at Reform Theological Seminary.

And I'm delighted to be talking to you today about the Puritans on suffering and what they

have to teach us in this day.

And of course, they would want to point us to Christ and the scriptures.

They wouldn't say, our ideas aren't the most important ideas

about suffering. God's ideas are the most important ideas. But they're so good in pointing us to the

scriptures. And then I think one thing you'll find is you read various Puritans, and there are a few

that I'll highlight that have this gift. They have a real gift of turning a phrase in about a

sentence length that really sticks and

you remember it and then it helps you when you run into particular situations in the Christian

life because it's kind of stuck in your mind. And I'll give you some of those phrases,

hopefully, as we talk today. It's not surprising that a lot of us would gather in the room to think about suffering, because

suffering is a part of human experience universally, and it is a part of Christian experience

universally.

I don't claim to know much personally about suffering, certainly, in comparison to many other

wonderful Christians that I know. I have had friends who have been thrown into prison because

they are Christians. I've never had that experience.

I have had friends who have lost children. I have not had that experience. I have friends who struggle

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