Suffering

The last few weeks I have [reluctantly] been learning about the concept of Biblical suffering. It seems as though every sermon I listen to, nearly every class I attend, and every passage of scripture lately has been about suffering. While this has been a point of discouragement for me in the last few weeks, I think I am finally starting to grasp the beautiful truths that God has hidden inside of suffering for those willing to trust him through it.

The other day, I came home in a fit of tears, frustrated at myself and life, and complained to my roommate Bethy that I was tired of hearing so much about suffering and really discouraged. She was very quiet, which is not unusual for her, but there was something I could tell she was avoiding telling me.

Later that night, I came home from class, and she said she needed to tell me something that would make me cry. Ugh, great! Before praying she asked me how I was doing with the whole concept of suffering, and I reluctantly told her that I was really struggling with accepting it because I did not want to give up certain things that made me comfortable, or allow myself to be put into a place of suffering from God (silly thoughts, but I was really wrestling through this...) She said, "Maybe you are having a hard time with all of this because you are afraid to suffer."

Yeah. She pretty much struck the unspoken chord that had been the pinnacle of my wrestling with God. I always thought of myself as okay with suffering until I would enter into anything hard (sickness, depressive thoughts, bad days) in which I would freak out and do anything I could to get comfortable again. While not all of those things are necessarily 'Biblical suffering' for the sake of the gospel, there is a spiritual aspect of these things that I have been chosing to ignore, seeking my own comfort instead of God's lesson through the uncomfort and 'suffering.'

Unfortunatly all of this is going to sound incredibly cliche and "dont ever do anything to make yourself to comfortable, just trust God' like, I want you to know that this is something I am (myself and not you... haha) wrestling through and praying about. So please dont take my applications and apply them to yourself... I plead with you to let God direct your heart into whatever he is teaching you at the moment.

If I could convey one thing though it would be this:

If you are going to chose a life where God is your precious treasure, where the focus of your every day life is to further the gospel, and activly living out your faith, you are stepping into the line of fire. Satan hates this. Not only that, but God will be allow hardship in your life, trials, to grow you. Suffering sucks. There is nothing glorious about it. Dont be dissalusioned.

There is something precious though. It is far more lovely, far more decedantly delightful...

But you really only experience it when you submit to God's right to bring into your life whatever He in his perfection desires, even if it sucks like nothing else.... or is the worst thing ever...

you will find this lovely thing called comfort.


Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ht eFather of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions, so that we may be able to comfrot those who are in any affliction, with the comfort by God. For as we share abundantly in Chirst's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
II Corinthians 1:3-5


Let God become your most cherished and precious delight.