Tim Keller (pastor) - Suffering Quotes

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Some suffering is given in order to chastise and correct a person for wrongful patterns of life (as in the case of Jonah imperiled by the storm), some suffering is given not to correct past wrongs but to prevent future ones (as in the case of Joseph sold into slavery), and some suffering has no purpose other than to lead a person to love God more ardently for himself alone and so discover the ultimate peace and freedom.

Tim Keller
Christianity teaches that, contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming; contra Buddhism, suffering is real; contra karma, suffering is often unfair; but contra secularism, suffering is meaningful. There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can imagine.

Tim Keller
Suffering is unbearable if you aren't certain that God is for you and with you.

Tim Keller
Christianity does not provide the reason for
each experience of pain,
but it does provide deep resources for actually facing suffering
with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair

Tim Keller
Suffering can refine us rather than destroy us because God himself walks with us in the fire.

Tim Keller
At the end of history the whole earth has become the Garden of God again. Death and decay and suffering are gone.... Jesus will make the world our perfect home again. We will no longer be living 'east of Eden,' always wandering and never arriving. We will come, and the father will meet us and embrace us, and we will be brought into the feast.

Tim Keller
Only if you first seek inner forgiveness will your confrontation be temperate, wise, and gracious. Only when you have lost the need to see the other person hurt will you have any chance of actually bringing about change, reconciliation, and healing. You have to submit to the costly suffering and death of forgiveness if there is going to be any resurrection.

Tim Keller
In the secular view, suffering is never seen as a meaningful part of life but only as an interruption.

Tim Keller
Suffering dispels the illusion that we have the strength and competence to rule our own lives and save ourselves.

Tim Keller
If God is treated as God during suffering, then suffering can reveal and present him in all his greatness.

Tim Keller
When pain and suffering come upon us, we finally see not only that we are not in control of our lives but that we never were.

Tim Keller