Years ago I went to the Tower of London and saw the new display of the crown jewels. They're just unbelievable; they don't even look real. They're the more spectacular because they're in these show cases that are lined in black velvet. So the jewels are placed on the black and that just makes them absolutely stand out. And I think the glory of God in our suffering is like that black velvet — it enables Him to display His character and His glory and His purpose in our lives in a way that He couldn't if our lives didn't have the black velvet. I feel like as a believer our suffering doesn't have to be wasted. The crime is when — in our bitterness or our anger or our offense — we allow it to be wasted and we don't milk from it all of the blessings and the lessons and the purpose and the glory that God would have for us — that we would know him in a deep way.

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Sometimes people think that Billy Graham's daughter doesn't have problems! As if I didn't have problems and I had everything I wanted, God answers all of my prayers. I could tell people about Jesus and they would shrug it off because, you know, you're just not in the real world! But its when we suffer and struggle and go through some of the same things everybody goes through, and at that point in time we're experiencing the peace of God and His joy and we can still be thoughtful of others and reach out to our neighbor. Then the world sits up and takes notice, because they don't know anything about that. When they suffer they take their drugs or their alcohol and they run to escape and they get bitter or they go into depression but they don't know what its like to go through suffering and be moment by moment conformed to the image of Christ until they become almost translucent in their character — so people can see Jesus in them and God is working out His purpose for their lives.

Nobody wants to suffer — and I'm first in line on that — but God uses it for His purposes and one of His purposes is to develop our faith so we put our trust in Him alone. The other purpose is that we might use it to display His glory in our life. Not only in the process but in the end, when He works it out and it's resolved and people see that our trust was not in vain.

Preaching: What can we do to help people better deal with those issues of pain and suffering and use them for God's glory? Are there some things the church could be doing to help people in that area?

Lotz: Absolutely. We in the church need to teach our people to know God and to know Him for themselves, as they read the Bible for themselves and they apply it to their lives and they live it out by experience. To spend time in prayer for themselves, not just going through their prayer list to get answers but in prayer to get to know God, so that they're actually communicating. We in the church need to make it our priority that every single person that's in the church would develop a personal, one-on-one, growing relationship with the living God and to know Him. He is a God of love, He's good, He's kind, He wants your best. His will is good for you. When you're suffering but you know God like that, you trust Him.