Good morning. Welcome to the morning motivation. Thanks for being here. I'm Mike Slater.

We're talking this week about suffering. What is the Christian answer to suffering? Every religion

and every worldview tries to answer this question and we're spending this week to talk about

the Christian response. Five points. Number one, God uses suffering to reveal our spiritual

condition. That was on Monday. Yesterday we talked about how God uses suffering to humble us.

And today, God uses suffering to draw us to himself. John 443, Jesus is in Galilee, and an official comes up to him and begs him to heal his

son who is close to death. And Jesus said, your son will live. And sure enough, his son was healed.

And the Bible says, so he, the official, and his whole household believed. There was suffering, and it led to him and the whole household believing.

Would the Roman official have believed if it weren't for the suffering? J.C. Ryle, I'm reading a book

up now, so you're going to hear a lot of J.C. Ryle, he was a pastor in the mid-1800s.

He said affliction is one of God's medicines. Wait a second. That doesn't make any. A medicine is supposed to get rid of an affliction.

Affliction is the medicine. Affliction is one of God's medicines. By it, he often teaches lessons, which would be learned in no other way.

By it, affliction, suffering, he often draws souls away from sin in the world, which would

otherwise have perished everlastingly.

Health is a great blessing, but sanctified disease is a greater.

Prosperity and worldly comfort are what we all naturally desire, but losses and crosses are far better for us, if they lead us to Christ.

Thousands at the last day will testify with David and the noble men before us.

It is good for me that I have been afflicted.

Wait, how can that? What do you mean? It's good for me that I've been afflicted. Sure enough, Psalm 1171. It's there. I love it when I come across a line. And I'm like, that's not really in the Bible. And I look it up and there it is. it is good for me that I have been afflicted.

So let's put these three together so far that we've gone over on this Wednesday. So you're going through life. Things

are fine. I'm great. I'm better than that person. And then something terrible happens.

The Hindus will say it's karma. The Buddhist will say, well, you're suffering because

...