Hi, my name is Pete Gazzaro. I want to welcome you today to the Emotionally Healthy Leader

podcast. Our title today is, why pain and failure are God's great gifts to you. Why pain and

failure are God's great gifts to you? Like, wow. So you may be right now in the midst of some pain,

or even failure. Maybe you've just come out of a season of great difficulty and are a bit

deflated, or maybe everything's all good. But I promise you, you will go into a season of

pain and failure. It's part of leadership. So today I want to give you a perspective,

a broad perspective for the long haul, that you might join Paul as one of my favorite texts

Romans 5, 3 to 5, where Paul says, we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also

glory in our sufferings. So Paul revels in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings.

So Paul revels in the fact that one day he's going to actually experience the very glory of God

himself. And when the Bible speaks of hope, it's a certainty, it's a sure thing that the way

we look at our present circumstances is transformed because of the long-range future where we're going. And so Paul says,

not only do we boast in the hope of the glory of God, but we glory in our suffering. And the word

there in Greek is Philipsis. It's when we glory in the pressure, the suffering, the difficulties of

living in a hostile world because we know that suffering produces perseverance, that is patience and endurance,

and then perseverance character that of gold tested by fire, much like Abraham, who grew into

a mature father of the faith.

We're not just raw recruits, we're actually veterans under faith.

We have character and then character, hope.

And again, he closes with hope again, and hope does not put us to

shame. And so Paul, it's a jolt to first century Greco-Roman culture. And Paul says, you know, suffering,

or failure, pain is the means that we experience God's grace in its fullest, greatest way, and it's a

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