Paul rejoiced in suffering because he was energized and enlivened by challenges and problems which activated his gifts. He was brought to a place where he could say, “I was born for this.”

I once taught from the letters to the churches in Revelation. I told the group that if they were spiritually high-centered, if life had gotten stagnant and boring, one certain solution is to pray for God to send tribulation into your life. Pray for trouble.

Of course, there was no rush of people wanting to tell me what a great teaching that was. But some months later, a young woman who had been there came and told me that she had taken me seriously. She had been dissatisfied with her lukewarm spirituality, and had asked God to stir up her life by sending trials her way.

She told me how that prayer had been answered in abundance, and how it was the turning point in her relationship with God. She began to grow, to know God more intimately, and in the end she became a woman of great godliness. She no longer took God for granted.

Not many of us can say, “I was born for this.” Not many of us want so badly to grow in our relationship with God that we will pray for God to send us trouble.

But those who do find something greater than the finest gold. Those who do find Life. They find life in richness, in abundance, life worth living. And they truly understand what it is to “exult in tribulation.”