I wonder, what are some of the things you rejoice in? Your favorite team winning that game. That precious grandbaby being born. Tagging that big trophy buck. Seeing your favorite person win on that TV show you love to watch. Oh, and I bet you rejoice on payday.

But you know what typically doesn’t make our list but should? Suffering. Yes, suffering. If we are going to biblical, we should rejoice in our suffering because that’s exactly what the Holy Spirit tells us through Apostle Paul in Romans 5 when teaches by example by saying, “We rejoice in our sufferings.” And before you just write that off as crazy, hear why he rejoiced in his sufferings and so should we.

Here’s the fullness of what Paul was teaching, “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Ah, do you see now why we are to rejoice in our suffering? It’s not the suffering itself we rejoice in as if we are some masochist. No, we rejoice in what our suffering produces in us. It produces endurance and character and hope, which way overshadow the suffering.

May you see your suffering through a biblical lens today and experience these good spiritual fruit so that you might by the grace of God rejoice even in your suffering. And what difference that will make in you and around you.

Change begins in you!