Today, I’d like to answer the question, “Why am I suffering?”

Even once, I’m sure you’ve asked that question in your life.

Here’s God’s big message for you today: The greater the pullback, the greater the come back.

First, I need to correct some crazy ideas about God.

Some people think that God loves suffering. And that He enjoys watching His children suffer.

This is preposterous. Any parent who enjoys watching his kids suffer is a giant nut case and should be arrested.

Here’s the Truth: God does NOT love suffering. God is NOT a masochist. God wants you to avoid all avoidable Suffering. You might be asking, “But Bo, what about the Cross? And this thing about carrying your Cross to become a Disciple of Jesus?”

Here’s the Answer: God doesn’t want suffering, He wants the FRUITS of suffering. Yes, suffering has Fruits!

Let me give you an analogy.

I don’t think anyone says, “I love manure!” I haven’t met anyone yet who wakes up in the morning and says, “I love the smell and texture and feel and touch of manure!” But if you mix manure in the soil, and plant fruit trees in that soil, the organic fruits will be very yummy.

Suffering is like manure. God allows suffering because of the fruits that come out of suffering.

And the most important fruit of suffering is CHANGE. As Scripture says, “Sometimes it takes a painful situation to make us change our ways” (Proverbs 20:30).

Do you want to be successful? CHANGE.

7 Possible Fruits of Suffering

There are seven wonderful Fruits of Suffering.

Here’s the first one…

1. Hunger

The greater the pullback, the greater the come back.

You can’t succeed without changing.

Let me ask you. Do you know what is the enemy of success?

There are a lot of possible answers: Laziness, selfishness, Sinfulness…

My answer may shock you.

I believe the enemy of success is success.

Confused?

Let me say it in another way. The enemy of big success is small success.

How come? Success has a way of lulling you to sleep. Of seducing you to slumber. To slack. To sloth.

Because by nature, we look for comfort. And we don’t want to change. We become set in our ways. We get trapped to what brought us success.

That’s why suffering is important.

The Cure of Success Is…

For example, I know of a 39-year old who was so successful.

Why? Every single day, he’d wake up in the morning and play golf, go to the gym, hang out with friends, and by evening, date girlfriend #1 or girlfriend #4 or girlfriend #32. Note: He did all these while being jobless!

How did he do it? Because Mommy and Daddy still paid the bills. His parents paid for his gourmet food, his designer clothes, his sports car… What a wonderful life!

They spoiled him rotten.

But his “success” (if you can call it that) kept him from bigger success—the joy of earning his own money, buying his own stuff, helping other people.

One day, his father had a heart attack. And he couldn’t go to work anymore. All of a sudden, the faucet where money gushed out, dried up.

This “suffering” destroyed his success. And it FORCED him to go out of his house, find work, or starve to death.

The cure of success is suffering.

The purpose of suffering is to disturb you from your small success, to shake you, to move you out of entropy to energy.

Like what happened to this man…

Tenfold Increase

One day, I met a supervisor in a company.

At that time I met him, he earned P21,000. His job gave him enough to feed his 4 kids and send them to school. But there were no extras for a movie or a restaurant or vacations. During emergencies, he had to borrow from his friends, just to cover bills.

For almost 11 years, he stayed in this company.

One day, he learned that there was a retrenchment program in his company—and to his horror—his name was in the list. He asked himself, “How can I now feed my kids? How can I send them to school?” He was stricken with horror.

And hunger. That hunger forced him to look for something to feed his family.

One day, he learned that his wealthy cousin was looking for someone with his skills. His cousin asked him, “Do you want to run my business for me? You’ll own 20% of the company.”

He dove into the project like a madman. He told himself, “Failure is not an option. For the sake of my four kids, I will succeed.”

Today, the business is doing so well, he’s earning P200,000+ a month, or 10 times whatever he was earning before as a supervisor. He now has more money to give to God’s work, to invest more for his future, and to spend for those little extras for his family.

To this day, he says, “The best thing that happened to my life was being retrenched!”

Note: I’m not asking you to pray for retrenchment. Here’s my encouragement—Don’t wait for a crisis before creating hunger.

Use your hunger!

We’ll talk about the other fruits of suffering in the following weeks, so make sure to keep reading your SoulFood newsletter, and send it to your friends too.

May your dreams come true,

Bo Sanchez