Somewhere along the way, many of us came to believe that if you are a follower of Jesus, you are promised a happy and carefree life. But when you read the Scriptures, you see that to follow Jesus means that you are also called to take up your cross. For most of us, it doesn’t take long to figure out that living life in a broken and fallen world means that you will encounter suffering and hardship. And, for the Christian living in this broken world, the Scriptures tell us to be prepared for additional difficulty and persecution because of our faith. What is suffering? What are the benefits of suffering? How are we to navigate a life filled with suffering? And how can we as parents and youth workers rewrite the narrative for kids so that they are prepared to live with suffering? We’ll talk about these questions and more with Dave Ripper, co-author of a new book, “The Fellowship of the Suffering: How Hardship Shapes Us for Ministry and Mission”, on this episode of Youth Culture Matters.