Suffering is an unpleasant reality for Christians, yet it has an amazing transforming potential to refine our faith. Believers discover the blessing hidden under anguish in a place of difficulties, a blessing that comes from bearing suffering for the sake of righteousness.
Nobody can plunge the faith of Christ in your spirit out. But for suffering in the flesh (physical life) because of that same faith, blessed are you when you go through them.
Bear with discomfort as you grow to see the fullness of your destiny being manifested. Stand up for your divine vision firmly in your mind and let the naysayers say what they want.
It’s worth bearing up under pain because of your commitment to God. Physically, it might not be okay with you. But your reward in heaven for going through that is waiting for you.
When will you release grace to your situation? When will you stop calculating happenings by your limited understanding? God is the ancient God, who knows the end from the beginning. If He tells you, “My child, come to me in prayer. I will show you things you don’t know” (see Jeremiah 33:3), it’s not for fun. Instead, it’s for your safety.
What you say when you face a situation affects how you approach it. Let God redefine your situation by seeing it as He sees it, not by what natural people see or say.
Faith and patience work together. If you have faith that God will do what He said, pray and be patient unto Him to fulfil the vision. It’ll take time, but it’ll get accomplished. Fret not!
Jesus knew that the Israelites were told to hate their enemies (although it wasn’t scriptural – check Leviticus 19:18). But to transform their thinking, He taught them that they should, instead, love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. Why? Because that act exemplifies the unconditional love of God in man.
Now that applies to us today
No Christian is protected from facing troubles in life. However, how we respond when they come will determine whether they’ll break us or God will use them to engraft His word in our lives.
As long as we live in a wicked world (1 John 5:19), there’ll be persecutions against our faith. And when the persecution becomes as fierce as people hating us and blood-brothers delivering up (total neglect to take care of our needs, so to say) siblings to get killed, we should endure till the end.
As a servant of God, you have to learn how to endure afflictions. You must learn how to live and fulfil your divine mandate, whether you have meagre or many resources, be it financial wise or human resource-wise.
Persecution isn’t preventive in Christ. It’s necessary, although it’s not God-manufactured. Why? Because God uses them to test our faith as His children.
