In all my reading of Bunyan, what has gripped me most is his sufering and how he responded to it—what it made of him, and what it might make of us. All of us come to our tasks with a history and many predispositions. I come to John Bunyan with a growing sense that sufering is a normal, useful, essential, and God-ordained element in Christian life and ministry—not only for the sake of weaning us of the world and teaching us to live on God, as 2 Corinthians 1:9 says, but also to make pastors who are more able to love the church (2 Tim 2:10; Col 1:24) and make missionaries who are more able to reach the nations (Matt 10:16–28), so that they can learn to live on God and not the bread that perishes (John 6:27).