Deeper by Dane C. Ortlund
Week 8: Chapter 7 — Suffering
Read Chapter 7 of Deeper by Dane Ortlund. Key passages: Romans 5:3–5; 2 Corinthians 4:7–18; James 1:2–4.
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Ortlund turns to suffering — not as an interruption to growth but as one of God's most consistent and powerful tools for producing it — and asks us to receive our pain as something other than a problem to be escaped.
Discussion Questions
8 questions1.Ortlund argues that suffering is not a detour from sanctification but one of its primary roads. How does this land in your gut, not just your head? Is there a season of suffering in your past or present that you can begin to see differently through this lens?
2.Romans 5:3–5 says we "rejoice in our sufferings" because suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Ortlund is at pains to say this is not stoic resignation or positive thinking. What makes this distinctively *Christian* rather than merely a therapeutic reframe?
3.2 Corinthians 4:7 describes believers as "jars of clay" carrying a treasure. Ortlund unpacks why God would put the treasure of the gospel in such fragile containers. What is the theological purpose of human frailty? What would be lost if God worked primarily through the strong and impressive?
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