Suffering Is Part of the Curriculum
Why God trains His servants through trials, and how to suffer without losing heart.
Most men preparing for ministry expect hard work. Fewer expect suffering. Yet Scripture makes clear that suffering is not an interruption to the calling, it is part of the training.
There are hardships you can predict. Long weeks. Difficult conversations. The slow labour of preaching and prayer. The ordinary pressures of caring for people. But there are other hardships you cannot predict, and they are often the ones that shape you most. Criticism that lands like a punch. Betrayal that leaves you stunned. Illness that drains your strength. Family sorrow that reshapes your capacity. Seasons where nothing seems to move and you wonder if your labour is in vain.
When those seasons come, the temptation is to conclude that something has gone wrong. Perhaps God is displeased. Perhaps you are not called. Perhaps this church is not right. Perhaps you should escape.
Sometimes change is necessary. But very often the right conclusion is simpler and steadier. Suffering is part of the curriculum. God teaches His servants through trials, not because He enjoys their pain, but because He loves His church, and He intends to make His shepherds more like Christ.
The Bible Does Not Hide This Reality
The New Testament is direct about suffering in Christian life, and particularly in Christian ministry.
Paul tells Timothy, “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 2:3). He does not say, avoid it, or be surprised by it. He says, share in it. He presents suffering as a normal feature of serving Christ in a hostile world.
Peter says, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you” (1 Pet. 4:12). That line is not written to stop Christians feeling pain. It is written to stop them drawing false conclusions about the pain.
And the Lord Jesus Himself sets expectations. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). That is discipleship language, but shepherds are disciples too. You cannot lead people in the way of the cross without walking it yourself.
Why God Includes Suffering in the Training
If suffering is part of the curriculum, what is God teaching. Scripture gives several clear answers.
1. Suffering humbles us
Ministry can inflate a man. Compliments come. Influence grows. People look to you. Even good desires can quietly twist into a need to be needed. Suffering punctures illusion. It reminds you that you are not the Saviour.
Paul speaks of a thorn in the flesh that kept him from becoming conceited (2 Cor. 12:7). Whatever the thorn was, its effect was humbling. God sometimes appoints a thorn to protect a minister from himself.
2. Suffering drives us to dependence
Paul describes being “so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself” (2 Cor. 1:8). Why would God allow that. Paul answers, “That was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:9).
There are lessons you cannot learn in comfort. Dependence is one of them. God will not let His servants live on self reliance, because self reliance is fatal to faithful ministry.
3. Suffering makes us tender toward the weak
There is a kind of harshness that can grow in leaders who have not suffered much. They can confuse resilience with righteousness. They can assume that everyone should cope the way they cope. Suffering softens that.
Paul says God “comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction” (2 Cor. 1:4). Your own trials become part of your pastoral toolkit, not as stories to impress people, but as channels through which God’s comfort flows.
4. Suffering teaches you to preach what you actually need
In the early years, it is possible to preach truth without feeling its weight. You believe it, but you have not yet had to cling to it. Trials change that. The promises of God stop being decorative. They become oxygen.
This is one reason God trains preachers through pain. He wants you to preach Christ as a man who has learned to lean on Christ.
The Pattern is Christ, Then His Servants
We should never speak about suffering in ministry without looking at Christ. He is not only the example, He is the foundation.
Hebrews tells us that Jesus “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). That does not mean He was ever disobedient. It means that obedience was experienced in the full weight of pain. In suffering, He obeyed as a man under pressure.
If that is true of the Son of God in His incarnate life, we should not be shocked when God trains His servants similarly. The disciple is not above his teacher. The shepherd is not above the Chief Shepherd.
Peter connects the dots explicitly. Christ suffered, leaving us an example (1 Pet. 2:21). But Peter also says Christ bore our sins (1 Pet. 2:24). That means your suffering is never payment. It is never atonement. It is fellowship with Christ, training under Christ, and strengthening by Christ.
Some Sufferings are Particularly Common in Ministry
Suffering takes different forms. Some are shared by all believers. Some are more common in leadership.
Misunderstanding and misrepresentation
It is painful when people assume motives you do not have. It is painful when decisions are interpreted as power plays. It is painful when careful words are repeated with a different tone. Jesus knows that pain. “They hated me without a cause” (John 15:25).
Carrying burdens you cannot fix
Some griefs are beyond you. Some situations are complex. Some sin patterns are entrenched. Some marriages are breaking. You can counsel, pray, and labour, but you cannot control outcomes. That is a suffering of its own kind. It teaches you to entrust people to God.
Opposition to faithful teaching
Paul warns that some will not endure sound teaching (2 Tim. 4:3). When you speak plainly from Scripture, some will rejoice, and some will resist. That resistance can sting, especially when you know you are trying to feed them.
These pressures can tempt a pastor to cynicism. They can make him guarded, defensive, or sharp. That is why suffering must be handled spiritually, not merely survived.
How to Suffer Without Losing Heart
Paul uses that phrase, “we do not lose heart” (2 Cor. 4:16). He does not say, we do not hurt. He says, we do not collapse inwardly. How.
1. Keep the eternal horizon in view
Paul speaks of “this light momentary affliction” preparing “an eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17). He is not calling affliction light in itself. He is comparing it to glory. Eternity does not remove pain, but it prevents despair.
2. Bring your complaint to God, not to an audience
The Psalms show us how to speak honestly without becoming bitter. “Pour out your heart before him” (Ps. 62:8). Pastors need a private place with God where they can speak truthfully, with reverence, without performative toughness.
3. Take care with isolation
Suffering tempts leaders to withdraw. Yet God often sustains His servants through wise companions. Paul cherished the presence of faithful friends. Even when he felt deserted, he asked Timothy to come (2 Tim. 4:9). Receiving help is not weakness.
4. Refuse cynicism as a coping mechanism
Cynicism feels like protection, but it is spiritual hardening. It makes love shrink. It makes prayer thin. It makes preaching brittle. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7). That is not naivety, it is gospel shaped resilience.
5. Remember that God is at work in you, not only through you
It is easy to measure ministry by outcomes. But God is doing something in the minister as well. “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion” (Phil. 1:6). That includes the work He does through trials.
Do Not Waste the Trial
Suffering can be wasted. It can make you hard. It can make you self absorbed. It can make you angry at God. It can make you withdraw your heart from people.
But suffering can also be received as training. Not embraced as if pain were good in itself, but received as something God will use.
James calls believers to count it joy when trials come, because of what God produces through them (James 1:2 to 4). That is not emotional cheerfulness. It is theological confidence. God is doing something, even when you cannot yet see it.
And when you fail, when you crumble, when you complain too much, when you grow sharp, return quickly to Christ. The curriculum includes repentance too. The Lord does not only appoint trials, He supplies mercy.
A Steady Hope for Suffering Shepherds
There is a promise that steadies suffering leaders. “After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (1 Pet. 5:10).
Notice the order. Suffer a little while. Then God Himself acts. Restore. Confirm. Strengthen. Establish. That is not vague comfort. It is the pledge of the God of all grace.
Suffering is part of the curriculum. Not because ministry is bleak, but because God intends to produce shepherds who can feed others from a deep place. Shepherds who can speak of grace with credibility. Shepherds who can point weary saints to Christ because they have learned, through pain, that Christ is enough.
And one day the curriculum ends. The Chief Shepherd will appear, and “you will receive the unfading crown of glory” (1 Pet. 5:4). Until then, the Lord who appoints the lesson also supplies the strength.