“Adversity comes from different sources. You may at times face trials as a consequence of your own pride and disobedience. These trials can be avoided through righteous living. Other trials are simply a natural part of life and may come at times when you are living righteously. For example, you may experience trials in times of sickness or uncertainty or at the deaths of loved ones. Adversity may sometimes come because of others’ poor choices and hurtful words and actions. “… Your success and happiness, both now and in the eternities, depend largely on your responses to the difficulties of life”
• God can make good use of all that happens, but the loss is real.
Just as challenging times reveal inadequacies in temporal preparedness, so too the maladies of spiritual casualness and complacency inflict their most detrimental effects during difficult trials.
“The Saints should always remember that God sees not as man sees; that he does not willingly afflict his children, and that if he requires them to endure present privation and trial, it is that they may escape greater tribulations which would otherwise inevitably overtake them. If He deprives them of any present blessing, it is that he may bestow upon them greater and more glorious ones by-and-by."
“No matter how serious the trial, how deep the distress, how great the affliction, [God] will never desert us. He never has, and He never will. He cannot do it. It is not His character [to do so]. … He will [always] stand by us. We may pass through the fiery furnace; we may pass through deep waters; but we shall not be consumed nor overwhelmed. We shall emerge from all these trials and difficulties the better and purer for them.”9
“Courtrooms (can) be exciting arenas where combating attorneys (fight) out issues of life and death, but there (is) nothing exciting about a courtroom where tired old loves (go) to die, or to be exhumed for delayed post-mortem.”
For Latter-day Saints the central purpose of this life and God’s own “work and glory” is to bring about our progress towards eternal life (Moses 1:39). If progress is the whole point of mortality and it requires suffering, then suffering is inevitably bound up with the purpose of life. Once we understand this basic fact about God and ourselves, we come to this profound truth: God will allow suffering if it furthers our growth.
"Stepping into a major trial is like plunging with a weighted belt into a dark and weedy pond. You manage to scramble up for air, but the rest of the world doesn't matter. And you always think you're drowning."
Trials and tribulations tend to squeeze the artificiality out of us, leaving the essence of what we really are and clarifying what we really yearn for.
Jesus suffered deeply because He loves us deeply! He wants us to repent and be converted so that He can fully heal us. “When sore trials come upon us, it’s time to deepen our faith in God, to work hard, and to serve others. Then He will heal our broken hearts. He will bestow upon us personal peace and comfort. Those great gifts will not be destroyed, even by death.”