What does God promise to do for believers who go through testing and discouragement?
For believers who go through testing and discouragement, God promises that He Himself will encourage them and provide the strength needed to endure. The same Lord who permits persecutions and testings is the same Lord who supplies consolation through Christ, so suffering is matched by consolation.
Les explains that Scripture never promises a rose-petaled pathway; becoming a Christian does not mean everything will turn up roses. He compares the Christian life to paddling a canoe upstream—a constant battle against Satan and the world itself. Yet the promise is that as believers go through times of testing and discouragement, the Lord God Himself will encourage them. The same Lord who permits persecutions and testings provides the strength needed to go through them. Paul says that as the sufferings of Christ abound, consolation also abounds by Christ, and those who are partakers of the sufferings will also be partakers of the consolation. Early believers under the Roman yoke faced constant persecution and surveillance, so becoming a believer under Paul's preaching was an invitation to persecution, but God's consolation matched it.