Suffering

Some people believe that serving God is a bed of roses or that life is somehow suddenly supposed to work out perfectly once you give your life to Christ.  I'm not here to preach doom and gloom, but understanding how God uses suffering to perfect us can help us to live empowered instead of hopeless and defeated.  Often, when Christians encounter pain and discomfort in their spiritual walk, they begin to doubt God's love for them and some even turn away from the faith.  Yet, we see through the scriptures that pain positions us for spiritual growth and God's blessing in our lives.

If you are experiencing pain and suffering in your life, I'm going to ask you to do something that sounds outrageous-  I want you to rejoice.  Rejoice?  April, are you crazy ?  Absolutely.  :)  Rejoice because you are in the will of God and God is doing something awesome in your life.  If he allows you to suffer, it's because he will bring you out of your pain into a place of  glory and power!   Do you desire to know God in a deep and intimate way?  Then you must suffer.  The Apostle Paul said,

"That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made comforable unto His death"  (Philippians 3:10).

Often, we like to quote the first part of this scripture, "That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection."  Sounds great, right?  We all want to know God and experience His power in our lives. Yet, there is a prerequisite for this kind of intimacy with God. We must be willing to experience pain, or as Paul says "...and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made comformable unto His death."  Like Jesus, you must experience the weight of bearing your cross and then allowing yourself to be "crucified" on it (Galatians 2:20).  Then, and only then, will you experience God's resurrection power.  In order for something to be resurrected, there must be a death first.  Whose death?  Your own death.   Suffering allows that death to take place.  It makes you rely soley on God while your flesh is put to death.  Don't resist suffering. I find it interesting that when the Lord spoke to the church of Laodicea, he called them out for their inability to suffer for the kingdom of God,

"I know thy works, that thou are neither cold nor hot...Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing: and knowest not that thou are wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind and naked. I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed..."  Revelation 3:15,17

God desired (and still desires) a church that has been tried by fire. God tries us by fire to test us and to purge us. It is not a lovely process, but what comes out of this experience is something beautiful.  It's not always easy to rejoice when you are experiencing marriage problems, when you are unemployed, when your kids stray from the faith, when you are experiencing financial hardship, and when God simply says no to what you want. Instead of relying on earthly pleasures and activities to block out suffering (ie. money, career, drinking, drugs, leisure, etc.), we must cling to God and allow Him to perfect us.  Paul once said, "...I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong" (II Corinthians 9-10).  Glory in what God is doing through you.  Rejoice that He counts you worthy to suffer. Know that when you are at your weakest moments, God's grace is sufficient (II Corinthians 12:9)  and He will provide such an abundance of grace to see you through.  God's power will be the strongest in those frail moments. My encouragement to you is not avoid suffering, but take pleasure in knowing that God is working on you.  God doesn't start a job and leave in the middle of it. Rest assured that what He started in you, he will finish (Philippians 1:6).