Rejoice in Suffering

To rejoice in suffering doesn't make any sense to us until we realize that we are called to a life of praise, and praising in suffering keeps us focused upon the Lord and the good things He can bring out of hardships. Some of us are called to a life of suffering and when we're suffering we are actually living out our Lord's will for our lives. Can we bear this? Of course; God would never call us to do or be that which we can't.

The apostle Paul faced greater abuse and suffering than most of us ever will. He was beaten and left for dead, imprisoned, put on trial, and shipwrecked, yet he looked beyond these times of difficulty to what the Lord was accomplishing through his life. He was able to praise God for two reasons. First, he could praise God because of the great ministry he had among the prison guards and , second, he could praise God for using his imprisonment to conform him into the image of Jesus Christ. I believe that to be one of the great blessings we rarely praise God for. Even when we praise God for the good we can see coming out of our suffering, we fail to praise Him for the suffering itself. And if we attribute God to the good times, what will we do with the bad? Yes, it is that very suffering that conforms us to be like Christ. Yes it hurts, but something good is happening: We are becoming more and more like Christ.

If we believe that the Lord is in control and that He keeps His promises, then we must trust in the principle of Romans 5:3-5. These verses assure us that there is purpose in our hardships, sufferings, and persecutions. Specifically, they develop our endurance, strengthen our character and solidify our hope: "We also have joy with our troubles, because we know that these troubles produce patience. And patience produces character, and character produces hope. And this hope will never disappoint us ..." (NCV). Two immediate rewards of suffering are the deepening of our faith and the preparation for greater service to the kingdom of our God. We are able to rejoice because we are maturing believers whom God can and will use for His purposes.

The Lord will bring good from our suffering, just as he did for Paul and the other apostles. We mustn't allow doubt to muddy our faith or we won't be able to rejoice in what God is doing in and through our lives. And if we can't rejoice, we are in danger of giving up before God's good work can be completed. Rejoicing keeps us focused upon the Lord and His purpose so that we may see our trials through to the end and receive our reward.

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I'm developing the awful habit of turning off my alarm and going back to sleep. The last thing I remember this morning when the alarm went off was saying I was getting up only to wake up an hour later to find myself still in bed. Hmmm. Yesterday, I intentionally went back to sleep but this morning just happened. I don't like that. I think part of the problem is that it's cold to get out of bed. Who wants to leave the warmth and comfort of our bed, for a cold house? No matter what time I publish this post it will be an hour late. Rats! Oh well, it's just time. I'm sitting here trying to think of something to write and my mind is an absolute blank. So I guess I'll just say goodbye until tomorrow ... Oh, tomorrows blog may be late because I have to take Pepper to get his rabies shot in the morning so I can get his license fee paid before it becomes delinquent and costs me even more. On the other hand I may get up early and get my blog written before I go to get his shot. Until tomorrow ...

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Well, I'm coming back and editing in a postscript. I have decided that I will use Titles for my blogs and see how it goes. I sat down and "created" titles for all those I've written but haven't yet put in blog form. There were titles there that didn't take me too long to find. It's just that if I wanted to go back and see what I wrote about a certain subject, I couldn't tell by the blogs what I'd written about everyday and I figured if I had trouble, surely my readers struggled with it too. (Of course, that's assuming anyone would want to go back and check something I said.) I also wanted you to know that I may occasionally post a short blurb that I might find somewhere and I wanted to be able to put out that information without messing up the numbering sequences of my blogs and I couldn't think how to do that unless I just simply went back to excercising my brain and writing titles for everything. So in addition to my blogs you might occasionally find something that I've found interesting and wanted to make available to you. Such as the one I included at the end of my blog (yesterday?) called Tongue-tied. I thought that one was really good because it shows that God is in control of everything and He can do whatever He wants to do with our service, that it may not seem to us we're accomplishing much of anything at all, yet He can take it and create a miracle with it.

Also, I wanted you to know that I use several different Bible translations when I'm writing but general I use the NIV (New International Version) and the NCV (New Century Version.) I will occasionally use others but I will give the references for any other by complete name. However, I'll just use the abbreviations as I show them above. Thought some of you might be wondering. I'm sure I've sent out this information before but I thought it might be good to repeat it. Well, I think that's all I wanted to add to today's blog. Hope this makes blogging make sense!