Some Christians have a very limited understanding of God. They know God as their Father who is almighty and able to do anything He wants. Then they assume that since no father will want his children to suffer, He will always protect us from all forms of suffering. In other words, He will keep us always in good health, and He will prosper us so that we can enjoy this life doing whatever we like.
Suffering of any sort does not figure in that theology. But sooner or later everyone will have to admit that there is a lot of suffering in this life. To put it simply, suffering comes because of sin, not only ours but also from others. There is no way any of us can escape from suffering while we are on earth. Of course, once we are with God in eternity, He will take away all suffering (Re.21:4). Till then, we have to accept the fact that suffering will be there for us in one way or another.
Suffering serves at least three purposes for us. We recognise our need for God when we go through suffering, it teaches us that sin has consequences and it teaches us not to sin any more. Many people ask the question why a loving God would allow so much of suffering in this world. Now we can see that it is truly God's love for us that He uses suffering to draw us to Him. Just imagine what would happen if there was no suffering! We would live our way, not bother about God and never escape from the power of sin in our life.
There is another kind of suffering God wants us to take on voluntarily in order to stop sinning. That is the suffering that comes when we have to deny our sinful desires in order to do the will of God (1Pe.4:1). If we avoid this suffering, we can enjoy the pleasures of sin for a moment but then suffer the pain which the consequences bring us.
The more we learn to choose to 'suffer in our flesh' rather than to give in to sin, the stronger we also become able to bear the other kinds of suffering that there are in this world. We learn to overcome temptations and reduce the suffering that could have come from yielding to them. When other people sin against us, we become able to forgive and bear with them which reduces our suffering drastically, instead of harbouring anger, bitterness and malice towards them and suffering in our mind with all such thoughts.
The highest plan that God has for us is that we can partake of His nature – His character (2Pe.1:3,4). He cannot just give it to us but just as we made choices that led us to sin, He wants us to choose to behave like Him. His master plan includes using every form of experiences and suffering that we go through, and how other people mistreat us, to work this for our transformation into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ (Ro.8:28,29). Once we see this master plan that God has for us, we will be so gripped with it that we will 'happily' go through our sufferings in such a way that this can be accomplished in our life (Ro.5:3;Ja.1:2,3). This is a new and life-giving way.