What has tested your faith? Joblessness? Loss of a loved one? A dream that never materialized? An intellectual question you couldn’t resolve? These are situations that push us to re-evaluate our beliefs and make us wonder if we can really trust God. Sometimes they make us want to throw in the towel and give up altogether.

But as we read through Scripture, we find a multitude of people who faced great challenges. The way wasn’t always clear and was often marked with all kinds of suffering. These stories seem to show us, again and again, that trials aren’t something to avoid. They are inevitable—part of the deal.

Trials can serve a valuable purpose. They can build perseverance that ultimately leads us closer to God.

Job’s Suffering

Perhaps the best example of suffering is the story of Job. There was no one on the whole earth as righteous as Job, God’s faithful servant. But Satan challenged God saying, “Why shouldn’t he respect you? [...] You make him successful in whatever he does […] Try taking away everything he owns, and he will curse you to your face” (Job 1:9-11, CEV).

In the chapters that follow, we see one thing after another taken away from Job: family members, his home, possessions, friends, dignity, respect and even his physical health. Yet when his wife pushes him to just “curse God and die,” Job tells her something that continues to bear significance for us today:

“If we accept blessings from God, we must accept trouble as well” (Job 2:10, CEV).

Accepting trouble isn’t easy. We see this in Job’s honest, heart-wrenching laments. Then in the final chapters of the book God shifts Job’s perspective beyond his personal pain to God’s role in all of creation. God created Job as well as the expansive, unruly universe. God set everything in place and keeps things in order. God is Almighty, and Job a small part of the whole.

Suffering led Job to see how God’s ways were beyond his understanding. He discovered God in all of creation, throughout the whole universe, not confined to the limits of his own small life. Through perseverance, and crying out to God, he was able to finally say, “I heard about you from others; now I have seen you with my own eyes” (Job 42:5, CEV).

What would have happened if Job took his wife’s advice and gave up? What would have happened if he only saw God in his blessings, and not also in his troubles?

Paul’s Perseverance

What exactly is perseverance? Paul describes it as patient, steadfast waiting. He goes so far as to say: “We gladly suffer, because we know that suffering helps us to endure. And endurance builds character, which gives us a hope that will never disappoint us…” (Romans 5:3b-5, CEV).

As we persevere through suffering, we become people who don’t let our trials distract us from our greater purpose. We stay the course. We loyally hold on to our faith even in the most difficult situations. We are counted among the faithful and righteous, like Job, who put their hope in God rather than what was immediately visible.

We are able to persevere because we know what we have to look forward to. We set our gaze on sharing in the glory of God, as we experience God’s Spirit already alive in us. This is what enabled Paul to say from within prison walls:

“I have learned to be satisfied with whatever I have…Christ gives me the strength to face anything” (Philippians 4:11b, 13, CEV).

Perseverance is defined as “the quality that allows someone to continue to do something even though it is difficult.” In your life, what is worth doing even though it involves difficulties, failure or opposition?

There is no way to avoid trials and troubles. They are often unexplainable and not quickly resolved. But as we walk through them, one day at a time, we can arrive at a roomier, more expansive view of God. We can acknowledge that God is beyond our understanding, yet with us all the same. Slowly we develop perseverance, that hard-won character trait that lifts our perspective and sets our gaze—allowing us to see God with our own eyes.