Title: Be Still, My Soul: Embracing God’s Purpose and Provision in Suffering
Editor: Nancy Guthrie
Publisher: Crossway, 2010; 175 pp. $12.99
Recommendation (4-star scale): 
There are many tests in the Christian life.
How will the believer respond to temptation to sin? Will he remain faithful to Christ to the end? Will he wisely and generously use his spiritual gifts? Will he be teachable in general and respond in repentance to sin in particular? Will he, while still living in the flesh, avoid lifelong patterns of sin? Will he be love his wife as Christ loves the church (or will she joyful follow the leadership of her husband)? Will he speak the truth in grace?
But perhaps the greatest test is the test that Job faced: will he trust the Lord when he suffers unjustly for doing right? Will he endure with Christ in spite of persecution? Will he be faithful when he suffers the ravages of illness and loss?
We live in a fallen world and we live among (and are ourselves) fleshly people. As believers, we have been promised persecution. How will we respond?
It does not take many conversations in the average day to find people who are hurting over and wrestling through these questions. Is it even possible to endure? Is it realistic to presume that people will endure?
The answer to both those questions is yes — and there are abundant examples in Scripture (beginning with Job — the oldest book in the Bible) and extending to our own day in the lives of people like Joni Eareckson Tada and Helen Roseveare.
This brief work by Nancy Guthrie also provides Biblical and theological encouragement to those who suffer (by my count, that includes everyone). As Guthrie notes,
Few of us get through life without having the winds of difficulty blow through our lives at some point — cold, unrelenting winds that threaten to knock us down for good. And when the winds of suffering blow in our lives, what we need most is something secure to tether our lives to, something strong and unmovable that will keep us from being swept away in a storm of questions, fear, discouragement, and disillusionment.
This book is in part her own quest to anchor her life to the stability of God as she and her husband dealt with the deaths of two of their own children. She thus assembles the kinds of essays that address the kinds of grief she has felt as well as the sorrow of other painful struggles.
The book is divided into three primary sections: God’s perspective on suffering, God’s purpose in suffering, and God’s provision in suffering. In other words, does God care? what is God doing? and will God help?
In each section, Guthrie offers eight or nine brief essays (7-8 pages each, on average) from a wide variety of writers — pastors and theologians, men and women, historical and contemporary, American and European. The oldest writer is Augustine and the latest include modern writers John Piper, D. A. Carson, and Jerry Bridges. They include those who suffered the ravages of illness, injustice, and persecution. In short, they are people who have suffered deeply and well, and thought wisely and significantly about suffering and a Biblical response to suffering.
It is worth reading any book that includes an essay by someone like Joni Eareckson Tada that suggests that suffering is “God’s Plan A,” and another by Helen Roseveare (a single missionary woman who was abducted and raped by rebel soldiers in the Congo) in which she says that the cost of suffering is a privilege for believers, and another in which Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a German pastor martyred in Nazi Germany) says, “bearing the cross does not bring misery and despair. Rather it brings refreshment and peace for our souls.”
This is just such a book.
I write in the margins of all my books. I highlight and mark passages for quoting and reading again. This book compelled me to lay it in my lap and contemplate, confess, and pray for courage while I read it.
Do you suffer? Do you need encouragement and confidence and hope in the midst of a trial? Do you need to know of the sweet providence and provisions of God for you? Then read this book.
Words of Grace 