Encouragement for Those Currently Suffering

If you are reading this chapter from a prison cell, or from the kitchen table of a shattered home, or from the pew of a church that does not understand what you are going through, hear me: God has not abandoned you. I know it feels like He has. I know the silence is deafening. I know the darkness is thick. I know the promises of Scripture feel like words written for someone else in a better world. I have been where you are, and I have felt what you feel. And I am telling you—not as a theologian but as a man who lived it—that God is faithful.

“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). The morning is coming. It may be tomorrow. It may be next year. It may be on the other side of death. But it is coming—as certainly as the sunrise, as inevitably as the tides, as surely as the promises of God Himself.

“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17). Paul called his beatings, his stonings, his shipwrecks, his imprisonments “light affliction.” Not because they were light—they were crushing. But because when weighed against the eternal glory that awaits, the heaviest suffering on earth registers as featherweight on heaven’s scale.

Hold on. Endure. Persist. Not in your own strength—you do not have enough. But in the strength of the God who holds you in His hand, from which no one and nothing can snatch you (John 10:28-29). He began a good work in you, and He will complete it (Philippians 1:6). Not because you are strong enough. Because He is.

Final Exhortation to the Church

I close this chapter with a plea to the church of Jesus Christ. Open your eyes to the world behind the walls. The men and women in prison are not abstractions. They are not statistics. They are not the “others” excluded from life and our reality as Christians. They are human beings made in the image of God, some of them your brothers and sisters in Christ, souls for whom the Savior died. They are hungry, lonely, frightened, sick, abandoned, and desperate. And Jesus said, with a directness that admits no evasion regarding Christian prisoners: “I was in prison, and ye came unto me” (Matthew 25:36). The Gospel shines brightest in the darkest places. Do not fear the prison. The God who was present in the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is present in every prison cell in the world. He is there already. He is waiting for you to join Him. Go.

Action Steps

Memorize 2 Corinthians 4:17-18. Let these verses become the lens through which you view every affliction: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

Review the entire narrative of your suffering with the eyes of Joseph—looking for the purposes of God that you could not see while in the midst of the trial. Write them down. Let them become the foundation of your testimony.

If you are a pastor, preach Matthew 25:31-46 and Hebrews 13:3 to your congregation. Let the words of Christ convict and compel. Do not soften them. Do not explain them away. Let them stand in their radical, uncomfortable, unavoidable clarity.

Begin planning today how your church will engage with prisoners and their families. Do not wait for a crisis to begin. Do not wait for someone else to take the initiative. The command of Christ is clear. The need is urgent. The time is now.

Discussion Questions

How does the cross of Christ serve as the paradigm for understanding the relationship between suffering and glory? What does this paradigm teach us about God’s purposes in our own afflictions?

Read Romans 8:18, Acts 14:22, Philippians 1:29, and 2 Corinthians 4:17. How do these passages reframe the experience of prolonged suffering? Is this reframing merely theoretical, or can it actually sustain a person through years of affliction?

What does it mean that God “already sees you as glorified” (Romans 8:30)? How does this eternal perspective affect the way we endure present suffering?

How should the author’s personal testimony—of a faith that emerged stronger from years of unjust imprisonment—shape our understanding of what God can accomplish through suffering?