“This small and temporary trouble we suffer will bring us a tremendous and eternal glory, much greater than the trouble.”
2 Corinthians 4:17 (GNT)
When we go through difficulties in life, the first thing we often try to do is blame somebody else. But it doesn’t matter where your problem came from—God still has a purpose for it in your life.
Even when you do something foolish, God can use it. Even when other people hurt you intentionally, he can use it. Even when the Devil tries to mess things up, God can bring good out of it.
God’s purpose is greater than your problems and your pain. He has a plan! You need to look past the temporary pain and look instead at the long-term benefit in your life.
Romans 5:3-4 says, “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that . . . they help us learn to be patient. And patience develops strength of character in us and helps us trust God more each time we use it until finally our hope and faith are strong and steady” (TLB).
What’s the purpose of your problems and difficulty? God wants you to learn something. Every trial is a teacher. Every experience is an education. Every difficulty is for your development.
Most of us are slow learners. If you don’t learn something the first time, God will bring it up again in your life. It will come back because God is more interested in your character than he is in your comfort. He is more interested in seeing you become more like Christ than he is in making things easy for you.
Maybe you are facing a major difficulty right now. It may be an illness, guilt, a financial problem, or strain in a relationship. Does God have a word for you while you’re going through your difficulty? Absolutely. God is essentially saying to you, “Don’t give up; grow up. Let me make you more like me through this painful situation.”
Through your difficulty, let God fulfill his purpose in you—to transform you more and more into the person he created you to be.
Trust this truth: “This small and temporary trouble we suffer will bring us a tremendous and eternal glory, much greater than the trouble” (2 Corinthians 4:17 GNT).
Globalization and the attendant concerns about poverty and inequality have become a focus of discussion in a way that few other topics, except for international terrorism or global warming, have. Most people have a strong opinion on globalization, and all of them express an interest in the well-being of the world's poor. The financial press and influential international officials confidently assert that global free markets expand the horizons for the poor, whereas activist-protesters hold the opposite belief with equal intensity. Yet the strength of people's conviction is often in inverse proportion to the amount of robust factual evidence they have.As is common in contentious public debates, different people mean different things by the same word. Some interpret "globalization" to mean the global reach of communications technology and capital movements, some think of the outsourcing by domestic companies in rich countries, and others see globalization as a byword for
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