Suffering and Strife

Lately, God has been really bringing in a focus on suffering in my life. Everywhere I turn, it seems I am learning about how to handle suffering. Thus, I write you this to share some of what He is teaching me, and perhaps this will help those of us that are either going through suffering currently or are being prepped for suffering in the future.

The apostle Paul knew all about suffering. He was shipwrecked (twice), bitten by a snake, jailed, stoned, left for dead, beaten, excommunicated, and mocked. He lived with a "thorn in his side," a "a messenger of Satan" that gave him quite a bit of grief in his life. And yet, He was incredibly faithful. Was not Paul one of the greatest leaders of the early Church? Was he not the one that wrote thirteen books of the New Testament? What gives? Why didn't God protect him from that? By extension, why doesn't God protect those of us that struggle from our grievances? Check out 2 Corinthians 4:13-18 with me.

"¹³ And since we have the same spirit of faith in keeping with what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke, we also believe, and therefore speak. ¹⁴ We know that the One who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and present us with you. ¹⁵ For all of this is because of you, so that grace, extended through more and more people, may cause thanksgiving to increase to God’s glory.
¹⁶ Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. ¹⁸ So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." -2 Corinthians 4:13-18, HCSB

This, Christian, should bring you great joy. I am falling in love with 2 Corinthians, and this is one of my favorite passages. You see, if you are a Christian, you have the Spirit of God within you. That Spirit raised Jesus from the grave, and it raised you from your death, as well. Without Christ, we are dead in our sins, rebels that have spit in God's face and told Him to get lost. Clearly, we were deserving of death. Yet the Spirit rose us from the grave and brought us into this new life that we live, re-born to follow Christ.

Now that we are re-born and alive with the Holy Ghost coursing through your body, everything is working to give glory to God. Yes, your struggles are supposed to glorify God. How? Check it out: by thanksgiving. Yeah, God glorifies in your thankfulness for His grace during struggles. Being thankful for the grace that He gives you is easy when all is well on the home front; being thankful for grace when the world is crashing in is much harder. Yet, when we are thankful for grace in the struggles, all glory for our lives goes to God.

As the passage continues to say, don't give up. Yes, struggle and strife can bring you down, but we have something else to focus on: not what is seen (our dying flesh and earthly life), but on what is unseen (our future in the glory of God). Christian, your life now is minuscule compared to the life you will live for eternity. We will live forever in the glory and majesty of the God of the universe, praising His name and worshipping on the new Earth. This world will be completely repaired, and God will remake it in all of it's majesty. Everything will be made right, and we will be heirs to this Kingdom. So, stay strong. Stand firm in the faith, and give thanks for the new life you have in Christ. For as Paul says, "our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory."