Nobody writes poems celebrating pain.

We run from our afflictions, we resent our hardships, and we secretly wonder if suffering

was God's one mistake.

But what if pain isn't a divine error?

What if it's actually essential? Today, on Insight for

living, Chuck Swindall reveals why suffering is both inevitable and necessary in the Christian life.

As we look at First Thessalonians 3, we'll discover how God uses affliction as his megaphone

to speak truth that we'd never hear in times of comfort.

Chuck titled today's message, when your comfort zone gets the squeeze.

Try to imagine stacking up all the poems and essays ever written about the wonders of romantic love.

How high would that pile reach?

Would it be as tall as, well, the Empire State Building?

Would it be as high as Mount Everest?

Now then, add to that stack the works on valor and patriotism and family.

Oh my, who can count them all?

But look around for a flowing lyric on the topic of pain.

It's another story, isn't it?

You won't find many. No, not about pain. One writer

acknowledges that. He writes, I have never read a poem extolling the virtues of pain, nor seen a statue

erected in its honor, nor heard a hymn dedicated to it.

Pain is usually defined as unpleasantness.

He continues, Christians don't really know how to interpret pain.

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