God promises to produce goodness from our afflictions, as we walk in harmony with him. Often this goodness takes the form of personal growth.
God has endowed each of us with an innate capacity to learn soulful things through suffering like humility, gratitude, and unselfishness.
This is the reason everyone, including hardened unbelievers, can attest that tough times made them better people. We all glean everyday insights from common misfortunes.
However, God’s promise to produce goodness is not contingent on the nature of our affliction.
It is operative in every distressing situation, even the horrific traumas and senseless tragedies that have no human value.
How can this be?
After we become reborn believers, God adds spiritual subjects to the syllabus of life lessons we learn through affliction.
Beyond the temporal insights gleaned by unbelievers, God teaches us divine truths about his grace and excellence.
We learn in new ways, and at new levels, that God is always good, his ideas and methods are always superior to ours, and his love is indeed unfailing. We come to understand that he is the sole source of true contentment.
This expanded curriculum enables God to generate goodness from even our worst experiences.
