The Spirituality & Wisdom of Suffering

In the next episode of Podmasana, explore the Draw Near book and biblical suffering with author Hadassah Treu. Discover spiritual maturity and faith in adversity through Christian hope. This Podmasana conversation reveals how painful experiences become birthplace of blessings through lament, surrender, and drawing near to God. Learn practical spiritual disciplines for grief, anxiety and fear of the Lord, unmet expectations spiritual growth, and how Joseph Paul Jeremiah suffering stories guide transformation through trials.

Key Topics

Hadassah's journey through infertility, anxiety, and loss that shaped her biblical understanding of suffering as spiritual training
The transformative power of biblical lament—honest expression of grief to God while holding hope for healing and restoration
How painful experiences like rejection, loneliness, and unmet expectations create specific spiritual gains when we draw near rather than pull away
Practical spiritual disciplines for navigating acute pain: journaling, prayer with thanksgiving, renewing the mind, forgiveness, and cultivating joy
Why the fear of the Lord brings peace rather than anxiety, and how trusting God's sovereignty redirects hope from earthly desires to eternal satisfaction

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Hadassah (00:00) that suffering is an instrument of testing our faith and leading to growth and maturity. This, I would say, is really a core theological concept, at least in the Bible. And it is a concept which we can trace from the Old Testament to the New Testament. I will simply give a few examples, starting with the Old Testament. Let's start with the oldest book in the Old Testament. This is the book of Job, who is the epitome of the suffering person. Job himself recognized what is the purpose of his suffering in one verse in which he said that, my testing is over, I will come forth as gold. I'm a little bit paraphrasing, but come forth as gold is exactly what he said. there was a certain point there in the book in which he actually preferred to lose his life but to keep his faith acknowledging or recognizing the value, the immense value of his faith especially during this suffering. And then in the Old Testament we can of course start with the greatest example, this of Jesus Christ, especially in the book of the Hebrews, the letter to the Hebrews, there are a lot of examples in which it said that, for example, God saw it fitting to perfect the pioneer of our salvation through suffering. Also there is a verse in which it said that Jesus learned obedience through suffering. And in Romans for example we read about the fruit of suffering. ⁓ I just want to read this verse and one more. This verse is saying not only soul but we also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, character and character hope. In the last verse I want to quote because this is a very important verse for me also because of the practical implication of this verse. is in James chapter 1 and it says, consider it pure joy, brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. So we see this clear, clear connection between adversity, trials, pain of any sort, suffering, and how this may lead to character, to maturity, to perfection. Actually, the Bible even uses this word, perfection. Brendon Orr (02:41) Mm. Hadassah (02:44) And to the next part of your question, how this can be reconciled, especially for people who experience suffering, but this suffering seems to destroy their faith and not build it up. I would say that in each suffering or in each painful experience, there is a first initial phase. in which the pain is so intense that we of course, of course, we get angry with God, we question God, we doubt Him. And in this phase it may very easily happen that we may fall into not only into kind of depression but also kind of disillusionment of faith and experience this disillusionment. But the thing is that in my opinion this phase is temporal. And I think there comes a time when it's a personal choice, when we... And this is where James 1 comes into practice, where it says, consider it pure joy. So where we need really to check our thinking, to ask, to doubt actually our thinking, to question our thinking and to decide... to reframe it and decide how we consider what is happening to us. Because ⁓ this in change shows us that what we think and how we think about something is our choice. This is the first thing. And the second thing is pure joy. Of course, we don't consider something, especially suffering, pure joy because it's joyful. Definitely not, it's not joyful. But we consider it joyful because of the... result because of the potential blessing because of the potential gift which we can find in this suffering and I think that we can reconcile our faith and our suffering especially in this field when we train train our minds how to think how to view suffering and also train our hearts to trust God these are the two key things

The Spirituality & Wisdom of Suffering | Hadassah Treu

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