"[F ]or he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men" (Lam. 3:33, ESV).
"Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins?" (Lam. 3:39, ESV).
"My son, do not despise the LORD's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father, the son in whom he delights" (Prov. 3:11-12, ESV).
"I create the light and make the darkness. I send good times and bad times..." (Isa. 45:7, NLT).
"But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold" (Job 23:10, NIV).
"... But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering" (Romans 8:17, NLT).
"Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later" (Rom. 8:18, NLT).
"Who best can suffer, best can do." --John Milton
Unfortunately, some of us have to learn the hard way--the school of hard knocks. Don't call your mistakes a failure, but an education--now you know what not to do! Experience, the trial and error method that we chalk up to a learning experience, the O.J.T. in the trenches of life, and the pitfalls of everyday life are the best of all teachers. No one escapes life problem-free! Aldous Huxley, no Christian himself, remarked wisely, "Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you [what happens in you!]." They say experience is not what happens to you, but in you and what you do with it. Two persons with the same experience react differently--the same clay melts the butter, hardens the clay!
Even Jesus "learned obedience by what He suffered" (cf. Heb. 5:8). Blessed are those whom God teaches and corrects out of the Word, though (cf. Psalm 94:12; Job 5:17). Suffering is par for the course and comes with the territory--no one is exempt, for even Jesus didn't exempt Himself and requires nothing of us He didn't overcome. "For since He Himself was tested and has suffered, He is able to help those who are tested" (Heb. 2:18, HCSB). He was tempted in like manner as us, yet without sin and we have no right to complain (cf. Lam. 3:39 above), having not resisted sin to the point of shedding of blood (cf. Heb. 12:4).
God knows how to get our attention ("He gets our attention through adversity," Job 36:15), and pain is God's "megaphone to rouse a deaf world" (C. S. Lewis) that has become spiritually hard-of-hearing. It is inevitable that adversity, suffering, trials, tribulations, temptations, calamities, and hardships happen to us all in order to bring us closer to God and fashion us into His image and help us relate to Him: How does a sculptor forge a horse from a slab of marble? By removing everything that doesn't look like a horse, of course! God is chipping away at everything that doesn't look like Jesus in our sanctification. The key is that adversity and hardship build character. If Christ led us to it, He'll lead us through it!
Jesus warned of the man who was set free from a demon and didn't fill the void with Christ, only to be filled with seven demons and become worse off than before (cf. Matt. 12:45, NLT): "... This will be the experience of this evil generation." The problem with man is that he cannot clean up his act and needs a supernatural work of grace to echo the words of Paul: "I am what I am by the grace of God." We all have feet of clay, or a flaw not readily visible or apparent.
Even evangelist George Whitefield said of a criminal going to the gallows: "There but for the grace of God, go I." French mathematician and philosopher/theologian Blaise Pascal said that "we have a God-shaped vacuum only God can fill," while Saint Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, North Africa, said concerning God, "You made us for Yourself, and our hearts find no peace until they rest in You."
Christianity is not just a reformed or recovered life, but a relationship and/or fellowship with the living God through Christ--a wholly new life in Christ--getting to know Him! The goal is not to clean up our act, but to fill the emptiness and void with Christ living in our hearts. Christ didn't come to make bad men good, but dead men alive, one preacher claims. With Christ living in us, the demons cannot harm, hurt, nor even touch us. Jesus healed a man and later found him in the temple and admonished him: "... Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you" (John 5:14, NLT). It is ill-advised to return to a life of sin after having been cleansed (cf. Heb. 10:26-27), and dangerous policy return to one's vomit like a dog (cf. 2 Pet. 2:22; Prov. 26:11).
"Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins?" (Lam. 3:39, ESV).
"My son, do not despise the LORD's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father, the son in whom he delights" (Prov. 3:11-12, ESV).
"I create the light and make the darkness. I send good times and bad times..." (Isa. 45:7, NLT).
"But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold" (Job 23:10, NIV).
"... But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering" (Romans 8:17, NLT).
"Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later" (Rom. 8:18, NLT).
"Who best can suffer, best can do." --John Milton
Unfortunately, some of us have to learn the hard way--the school of hard knocks. Don't call your mistakes a failure, but an education--now you know what not to do! Experience, the trial and error method that we chalk up to a learning experience, the O.J.T. in the trenches of life, and the pitfalls of everyday life are the best of all teachers. No one escapes life problem-free! Aldous Huxley, no Christian himself, remarked wisely, "Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you [what happens in you!]." They say experience is not what happens to you, but in you and what you do with it. Two persons with the same experience react differently--the same clay melts the butter, hardens the clay!
Even Jesus "learned obedience by what He suffered" (cf. Heb. 5:8). Blessed are those whom God teaches and corrects out of the Word, though (cf. Psalm 94:12; Job 5:17). Suffering is par for the course and comes with the territory--no one is exempt, for even Jesus didn't exempt Himself and requires nothing of us He didn't overcome. "For since He Himself was tested and has suffered, He is able to help those who are tested" (Heb. 2:18, HCSB). He was tempted in like manner as us, yet without sin and we have no right to complain (cf. Lam. 3:39 above), having not resisted sin to the point of shedding of blood (cf. Heb. 12:4).
God knows how to get our attention ("He gets our attention through adversity," Job 36:15), and pain is God's "megaphone to rouse a deaf world" (C. S. Lewis) that has become spiritually hard-of-hearing. It is inevitable that adversity, suffering, trials, tribulations, temptations, calamities, and hardships happen to us all in order to bring us closer to God and fashion us into His image and help us relate to Him: How does a sculptor forge a horse from a slab of marble? By removing everything that doesn't look like a horse, of course! God is chipping away at everything that doesn't look like Jesus in our sanctification. The key is that adversity and hardship build character. If Christ led us to it, He'll lead us through it!
Jesus warned of the man who was set free from a demon and didn't fill the void with Christ, only to be filled with seven demons and become worse off than before (cf. Matt. 12:45, NLT): "... This will be the experience of this evil generation." The problem with man is that he cannot clean up his act and needs a supernatural work of grace to echo the words of Paul: "I am what I am by the grace of God." We all have feet of clay, or a flaw not readily visible or apparent.
Even evangelist George Whitefield said of a criminal going to the gallows: "There but for the grace of God, go I." French mathematician and philosopher/theologian Blaise Pascal said that "we have a God-shaped vacuum only God can fill," while Saint Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, North Africa, said concerning God, "You made us for Yourself, and our hearts find no peace until they rest in You."
Christianity is not just a reformed or recovered life, but a relationship and/or fellowship with the living God through Christ--a wholly new life in Christ--getting to know Him! The goal is not to clean up our act, but to fill the emptiness and void with Christ living in our hearts. Christ didn't come to make bad men good, but dead men alive, one preacher claims. With Christ living in us, the demons cannot harm, hurt, nor even touch us. Jesus healed a man and later found him in the temple and admonished him: "... Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you" (John 5:14, NLT). It is ill-advised to return to a life of sin after having been cleansed (cf. Heb. 10:26-27), and dangerous policy return to one's vomit like a dog (cf. 2 Pet. 2:22; Prov. 26:11).
Remember the warning to the woman caught in adultery: "Go and sin no more! (Cf. John 8:11)" And don't look back! (Cf. Luke 9:62). We must leave our life of sin! Caveat: We are not saved by good behavior or good deeds, but unto good behavior and good deeds, viva la difference! "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works" (cf. Eph. 2:10). We are not saved by good works, but for them!
There must be genuine repentance in the believer's life and our lives must show forth its fruits (cf. Acts 22:20). Jesus saves us to bear fruit (cf. John 15:8, and those branches not bearing fruit are pruned). We must prove we are up to the challenge and have changed by the good things we do in our attitude and behavior (cf. Acts 26:20). We don't want a new suit for the man, but a new man in the suit! We don't merely "turn over a new leaf," but are born again or anew in the Spirit. The whole point of our new life is that's it's radicalized in Christ and we are freed from the power of our sin--Jesus died to save His people from their sins (cf. Matt. 1:21), and he who is saved is freed from sin (cf. Acts 13:38-39). "If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed" (cf. John 8:36). Christians are "overcomers," and this is the victory: our faith! (1 John 5:4). We must take God seriously when He warns us and not to put confidence in the flesh, but in the Spirit and learn to draw on His power as we walk in the Spirit by faith (cf. Gal. 5:16, 2 Cor. 5:17).
All Christians are called to suffer for Christ and in His name according to Phil. 1:29, NLT, which says, we have the "privilege of suffering for him." Acts 9:16, NLT, says of Paul, "And I will show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake." The disciples gloried in and celebrated the fact that they were considered worthy to suffer in His name! (cf. Acts 5:41). This applies to us as well: The Christian life is not a bed of roses, but that doesn't mean we should get a martyr's complex either, thinking that the more we suffer, the better Christians we are! We share in the "fellowship of His suffering" as we walk with Christ in the Spirit (cf. Phil. 3:10; Gal. 5:16). Paul was glad and could boast in the Lord, and gloried in his sufferings (cf. 2 Cor. 11:16ff). Christ did say that Paul was to suffer great things for the sake of the Kingdom of God, but all of us "suffer that which is lacking in Christ's sufferings" to bring glory to Him (cf. Col. 1:24).
Christians are not called to be Stoics, whose primary objective is to cheerfully accept our lot in life, also known as the philosophy of the "stiff upper lip." We are not ruled by blind forces of fate like the Islamic kismet (blind fate), or what's called determinism; we have the destiny to be fulfilled in Christ doing God's will. We are not called to grin and bear it, though in Christ we can endure any trial or temptation, knowing Christ relates to our dilemma and predicament.
There must be genuine repentance in the believer's life and our lives must show forth its fruits (cf. Acts 22:20). Jesus saves us to bear fruit (cf. John 15:8, and those branches not bearing fruit are pruned). We must prove we are up to the challenge and have changed by the good things we do in our attitude and behavior (cf. Acts 26:20). We don't want a new suit for the man, but a new man in the suit! We don't merely "turn over a new leaf," but are born again or anew in the Spirit. The whole point of our new life is that's it's radicalized in Christ and we are freed from the power of our sin--Jesus died to save His people from their sins (cf. Matt. 1:21), and he who is saved is freed from sin (cf. Acts 13:38-39). "If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed" (cf. John 8:36). Christians are "overcomers," and this is the victory: our faith! (1 John 5:4). We must take God seriously when He warns us and not to put confidence in the flesh, but in the Spirit and learn to draw on His power as we walk in the Spirit by faith (cf. Gal. 5:16, 2 Cor. 5:17).
All Christians are called to suffer for Christ and in His name according to Phil. 1:29, NLT, which says, we have the "privilege of suffering for him." Acts 9:16, NLT, says of Paul, "And I will show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake." The disciples gloried in and celebrated the fact that they were considered worthy to suffer in His name! (cf. Acts 5:41). This applies to us as well: The Christian life is not a bed of roses, but that doesn't mean we should get a martyr's complex either, thinking that the more we suffer, the better Christians we are! We share in the "fellowship of His suffering" as we walk with Christ in the Spirit (cf. Phil. 3:10; Gal. 5:16). Paul was glad and could boast in the Lord, and gloried in his sufferings (cf. 2 Cor. 11:16ff). Christ did say that Paul was to suffer great things for the sake of the Kingdom of God, but all of us "suffer that which is lacking in Christ's sufferings" to bring glory to Him (cf. Col. 1:24).
Christians are not called to be Stoics, whose primary objective is to cheerfully accept our lot in life, also known as the philosophy of the "stiff upper lip." We are not ruled by blind forces of fate like the Islamic kismet (blind fate), or what's called determinism; we have the destiny to be fulfilled in Christ doing God's will. We are not called to grin and bear it, though in Christ we can endure any trial or temptation, knowing Christ relates to our dilemma and predicament.
It is a fact of psychology that one can endure almost anything if one sees purpose and meaning in it and has hope; we are in the voyage of a lifetime in our walk with Christ unto the eternal city! We are not to sing "Que sera, sera, what will be, will be..." like Doris Day, and complacently resign ourselves to life of impersonal, mechanical fate beyond our control; however, we have input and a choice in our destiny and Christ is with us and on our side throughout the way to guide us as the pilot in charge on our flight to heaven.
Caveat: Sometimes our sufferings are self-induced and from our own stupidity or ignorance in the ways of the world or in the Christian walk; if you've never made a mistake, you've never made anything, it's been well put. Saint Augustine, said it well: If I err, I am. This was the prelude to Rene Descartes' formulation: I think, therefore I am; and also: I think, therefore, God is! He should have thought: "God is, therefore I think."
Thinking requires a thinker which precedes it, and the universe gives the impression of being one vast complex thought by a Supreme Mind that is also a Great Mathematical Thinker. When we break God's moral laws ingrained in our conscience we must suffer the consequences, just like when we break physical laws or try to defy them (e.g., gravity)--God is the Great Lawgiver who rules over all and metes out due justice as well as mercy.
We must never wallow in self-pity and say, "Woe is me!" when we suffer for Christ's sake, it's an honor and will be rewarded. Instead of wondering why unfortunate things happen to us, realize that good things happen to the unsaved--that's a bigger puzzle! We must "through many hardships enter the kingdom of God" (cf. Acts 14:22), and they are part of the job description that we signed up for! Finally, a word to the wise is sufficient: "Don't doubt in the dark what God told you in the light"--faith is not a leap into darkness, but a step into the light with God at your side as a guiding light, "until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts" (cf. 2 Pet. 1:19). Soli Deo Gloria!
Caveat: Sometimes our sufferings are self-induced and from our own stupidity or ignorance in the ways of the world or in the Christian walk; if you've never made a mistake, you've never made anything, it's been well put. Saint Augustine, said it well: If I err, I am. This was the prelude to Rene Descartes' formulation: I think, therefore I am; and also: I think, therefore, God is! He should have thought: "God is, therefore I think."
Thinking requires a thinker which precedes it, and the universe gives the impression of being one vast complex thought by a Supreme Mind that is also a Great Mathematical Thinker. When we break God's moral laws ingrained in our conscience we must suffer the consequences, just like when we break physical laws or try to defy them (e.g., gravity)--God is the Great Lawgiver who rules over all and metes out due justice as well as mercy.
We must never wallow in self-pity and say, "Woe is me!" when we suffer for Christ's sake, it's an honor and will be rewarded. Instead of wondering why unfortunate things happen to us, realize that good things happen to the unsaved--that's a bigger puzzle! We must "through many hardships enter the kingdom of God" (cf. Acts 14:22), and they are part of the job description that we signed up for! Finally, a word to the wise is sufficient: "Don't doubt in the dark what God told you in the light"--faith is not a leap into darkness, but a step into the light with God at your side as a guiding light, "until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts" (cf. 2 Pet. 1:19). Soli Deo Gloria!
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