What is God's good design in our suffering? What's he doing in us and for us and through us in our pain? These are the very questions every Christian will ask at some point. And these are the questions that were answered by Pastor John in a sermon exactly seven years ago today.

The sermon was preached at Christ Community Church in Houston, Texas. Kevin, a podcast listener who attends the church, has been trying to get me to play the following clip for about five years now. Kevin, thank you for your persistence. Here it is. Here's Pastor John in Houston seven years ago preaching on Romans 8, verses 12 to 17.

No pain, no gain. No cross, no crown, no suffering, no inheritance. That's the way God has set it up. In other words, when it says in Romans 8, verse 23, "We're groaning." I would say all the groaning experienced on the path of obedience is what the suffering refers to in Romans 8, verse 17.

Because if you limit it to only hard things done to you from others because you're a Christian, you're missing a big piece of your suffering. Every pain in your life, every frustration in your life, every conflict in your life, every difficulty in your life that you experience walking on the path towards the inheritance is suffering with and for Jesus.

Because it is being used by the devil to threaten your faith and used by God to strengthen your faith. And if you will embrace it the way verse 17 says, it's your pathway to glory, God is triumphant and the devil is defeated. I don't care if it's a stubbed toe on the way shopping.

How you handle a stubbed toe in relation to God Almighty bears witness of your faith in His providence. If you're in His face, "I'm so down to get a stubbed toe, I asked another problem today, this is a bad day." Look, if you're not in hell, it's a good day.

Why would God ordain that the pathway to the inheritance be suffering and only suffering? I mean there is no other path of suffering free access. Doesn't mean everything on the path is suffering, you know that. We're sitting here in a very nice place and I'm feeling really good right now.

I have no stomach ache, no headache, no backache, I'm just, God is good, right? I don't mean there aren't good things on the way, I mean there will be suffering. Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of heaven, Acts 14. There's no other way. Now why would that be?

Why would God set it up that way? Here's a clue from Romans 5, 3. "Not only this, but we also exult or rejoice in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance, or in other words, endurance." Endurance of what? Faith. How does that work? Every hardship, from the tiniest dubbed toe to the loss of a spouse, the loss of a child, from the smallest to the biggest, every hardship in your life is the kicking out from under you of a prop that was supporting your happiness.

You can either curse God or fall on God. And God is kicking them for you to fall on Him. Because that's what makes you strong. Remember Paul in 2 Corinthians 1, verse 8? We were so unbearably crushed. We felt that we had received the sentence of death. That was to make us rely on God who raises the dead.

God brought Paul to the brink of death for one reason. There was only one person to trust now. The God who raises the dead. All of our hardships are designed to make our faith stronger, to make us rely more on God. From the littlest to the biggest. That's why it's the pathway to glory.

We've got to trust Him. Faith is the only way to heaven. And tribulations serve our faith. If the Holy Spirit is testifying that He's your Father, if He's not, you get angry at God. "I don't want this anymore! I'm out of here! If this is the way the children get treated, I'm out of here!" You don't have the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit says, "Father, I need You. This is hard. This is really hard. But You're my Father and Jesus is my Lord. This is the pathway to the inheritance, so I'm all in. Help me!" That's the way the Holy Spirit talks. So if you respond to hardship with, "I need a Father and Jesus is my Lord," the Holy Spirit is bearing witness with your spirit that you are the child of God.

I'm going to close with a story from John Newton. I come back to it over and over to convict myself of my murmuring. Paul said in Philippians 2, "Do all things without murmuring." Is there any more condemning verse in the Bible? All things without murmuring. Murmur, murmur, murmur. So here's what happened.

This is John Newton writing in the 18th century. So there are no cars, there are only carriages. So picture a horse-drawn carriage. A man is on the way to New York to get his inheritance. Here's what happens. "Suppose a man was going to New York to take possession of a large estate." Let's just say it's worth $5 million.

"Suppose a man was going to New York to take possession of a large estate, and his carriage should break down a mile before he got to the city." This is where we are in our walkway towards heaven. "Which obliged him to walk the rest of the way." What a fool we should think him if we saw him wringing his hands and blubbering out all the remaining mile, "My carriage is broken, my carriage is broken." Because he's on the way to an inheritance worth millions of dollars.

He can fix the carriage. Here's my addition to the story. Sometimes your kid falls over the cliff when the wheel comes off the carriage. And you fall out of the carriage and so crush your knee, you never walk normal again on the mile that's left in your life. That happens.

I want to make light here of broken carriages. We all can laugh at a broken carriage. Not as easy to say, "I lost my kid when he was 5, 21 of leukemia." I've buried so many kids. There's a whole, you know this, there's whole sections of woodlawn cemetery with little teeny places.

And to see his dad carry a white box like this is a carriage that you don't make light of that's broken. But he can know for himself, for this child, for his wife, he can know just a mile, just a mile over the hill. I get the child, I get the wife, I get the health, I get the world, I get a new car, I get a new body to enjoy it all.

And that's how his tears will not be the tears of those who have no hope. He will weep. We will weep. No, we won't weep as those who don't have an inheritance. So, my prayer for you now is that God would awaken the witness of the Holy Spirit, and would call out Abba, Father, and causing you to hate the sin in your life that murmurs against the Father, betrays the Father.

And if those two things are happening, the Spirit is speaking loud and clear into your life, your mind. Powerful. That's a clip from Pastor John's sermon from October of 2013 in Houston on Romans 8, verses 12 to 17. The sermon is titled "A Spectacular and Scary Promise." You can get the entire recording right now at DesiringGod.org.

Kevin, thank you for your persistence in getting this clip shared with the APJ audience. And if you have a favorite sermon clip of Pastor John's, send it to me. You'll only need to ask once, not multiple times like Kevin, I promise. Give me the title of the sermon and the timestamps from the audio of when the clip begins and when it ends.

Tell me why it's impacted you. Give me your name and the closest city to you, and email me all those details at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Put the word "clip" in the subject line if you would, please. Speaking of questions, one of the great and most important questions of Calvinism is over how God hardens hearts, like Pharaoh's heart.

Did Pharaoh harden his own heart first, or did God harden Pharaoh's heart first? And how does this dynamic of self-hardening lead to divine hardening as it unfolds, even in our culture today, as we look at Romans chapter 1? So, a really sharp question coming up next time with Pastor John back in the studio with me on Friday.

I'm Tony Reinke, and we will see you then.