Suffering Is Never for Nothing

Suffering Is Never for Nothing (B&H, 2019) was published four years after Elisabeth Elliot's death. Reviewers describe it as transcribed from her talks on suffering; Ligonier Ministries released her 1989 video series on the subject as Suffering Is Not for Nothing. She asks why we suffer and how to respond, arguing that suffering can either devastate a person or lead to gratitude and joy, and she draws on the death of her first husband in Ecuador and of her second from cancer. The connection she makes is between suffering and God's love, seen in Christ bearing human sin and sorrow on the cross.