“Here is the comfort for every sufferer: Hope is a person, and his name is Jesus. Life is a person called Emmanuel. God enters your life by grace and by grace makes you the place where he dwells. So he goes wherever you go; he’s there with you in whatever you’re facing, and he lovingly provides you with everything you need. You don’t have to search for him; you don’t have to wonder if or when he will come; you don’t have to earn his presence. His presence with you has been purchased by his own blood. In your suffering he gives you the best of gifts, the gift of himself. To be in him and he in you is infinitely better than having an easy, predictable, trouble-free life. And if hardship has been the tool that forges in you an unbreakable trust of him, then your hardship hasn’t been for naught. My prayer for everyone who reads this is that you would rest, knowing that the most important, wonderful, and life-giving thing you could ever experience, no one or nothing has the power to take away. God is with you in hope-giving, rest-producing grace, and he is simply never going away!”— Paul David Tripp, ‘Suffering’
