Joy In Suffering

"God...setteth in pain the jewel of His joy."

F.W.H.Meyers

"A friend who is gravely ill... is greatly loved by many and has had a unique ministry because of her gifts of friendship and hospitality.  Must she suffer?
The answer is yes.  For the Lord who loves her suffered and wants her to fellowship with Himself.  The joy of thus knowing Him comes not in spite of but because of suffering, just as resurrection comes out of death.  I have a Savior because I am a sinner; a beauty is given the child of God in exchange for ashes.
We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes.  But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem.  We receive His poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.
How can one's illness help another?  By being offered to Him who can transform it into blessing.

A Lamp for My Feet

O Joy that seekest me through pain,

I cannot close my heart to Thee;

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

And feel the promise is not vain

That morn shall tearless be.

George Matheson

-taken from Gateway to Joy, by Elisabeth Elliot
~Brittany

Seeing Trials as Opportunites, Blessings, and Real Fulfillments

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble" (Ps. 46:1). The question often comes, "Why didn't He help me sooner?" It is not His order. He must first adjust you to the trouble and cause you to learn your lesson from it. His promise is, "I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him." He must be with you in the trouble first all day and all night. Then He will take you out of it. This will not come till you have stopped being restless and fretful about it and become calm and quiet. Then He will say, "It is enough."
God uses trouble to teach His children precious lessons. They are intended to educate us. When their good work is done, a glorious recompense will come to us through them. There is a sweet joy and a real value in them. He does not regard them as difficulties but as opportunities.
--Selected.

Not always OUT of our troublous times,
And the struggles fierce and grim,
But IN--deeper IN--to our one sure rest,
The place of our peace, in Him.
--Annie Johnson Flint

We once heard a simple old colored man say something that we have never forgotten: "When God tests you, it is a good time for you to test Him by putting His promises to the proof, and claiming from Him just as much as your trials have rendered necessary."

There are two ways of getting out of a trial. One is to simply try to get rid of the trial, and be thankful when it is over. The other is to recognize the trial as a challenge from God to claim a larger blessing than we have ever had, and to hail it with delight as an opportunity of obtaining a larger measure of Divine grace. Thus even the adversary becomes an auxiliary, and the things that seem to be against us turn out to be for the furtherance of our way. Surely, this is to be more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
--A. B. Simpson

- Streams in the Deserts, Vol. 1, for September 7th

"Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress" (Ps. 4:1).
This is one of the grandest testimonies ever given by man to the moral government of God. It is not a man's thanksgiving that he has been set free from suffering. It is a thanksgiving that he has been set free through suffering: "Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress." He declares the sorrows of life to have been themselves the source of life's enlargement.
And have not you and I a thousand times felt this to be true? It is written of Joseph in the dungeon that "the iron entered into his soul." We all feel that what Joseph needed for his soul was just the iron. He had seen only the glitter of the gold. He had been rejoicing in youthful dreams; and dreaming hardens the heart. He who sheds tears over a romance will not be most apt to help reality; real sorrow will be too unpoetic for him. We need the iron to enlarge our nature. The gold is but a vision; the iron is an experience. The chain which unites me to humanity must be an iron chain. That touch of nature which makes the world akin is not joy, but sorrow; gold is partial, but iron is universal.
My soul, if thou wouldst be enlarged into human sympathy, thou must be narrowed into limits of human suffering. Joseph's dungeon is the road to Joseph's throne. Thou canst not lift the iron load of thy brother if the iron hath not entered into thee. It is thy limit that is thine enlargement. It is the shadows of thy life that are the real fulfillment of thy dreams of glory. Murmur not at the shadows; they are better revelations than thy dreams. Say not that the shades of the prison-house have fettered thee; thy fetters are wings -- wings of flight into the bosom of humanity. The door of thy prison-house is a door into the heart of the universe. God has enlarged thee by the binding of sorrow's chain.
--George Matheson
If Joseph had not been Egypt's prisoner, he had never been Egypt's governor. The iron chain about his feet ushered in the golden chain about his neck.
--Selected
-Streams in the Desert, Vol. 1, for September 8th

~Brittany

Losing to Gain

"If through losing what this world prizes we are enabled to gain what it despises - treasure in heaven, invisible and incorruptible - isn't it worth any kind of suffering?  What is it worth to us to learn a little bit more of what the Cross means - life out of death, the transformation of earth's losses and heartbreaks and tragedies?
Poverty has not been my experience, but God has allowed in the lives of each of us some sort of loss, the withdrawal of something we valued, in order that we may learn to offer ourselves a little more willingly, to allow the touch of death on one more thing we have clutched so tightly, and thus know fullness and freedom and joy that much sooner.  We're not naturally inclined to love God and seek His Kingdom.  Trouble may help to incline us - that is, it may tip us over, put some pressure on us, lean us in the right direction."

~ Elisabeth Elliot

Our pastor, Pastor Chris Pappas, often speaks of us needing to break our sword in surrender to Christ's lordship over our lives.  This verbiage came into my mind the other day as I was praying:  May He break our flesh that we would break our sword!

~Brittany

"Measure thy life by loss instead of gain;

For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice,

And whoso suffers most hath most to give."

- Ugo Bassi -

~Brittany

Stablished through Suffering

"But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you."  - 1 Peter 5:10

"Notice how this blessing of being “stablished in the faith” is gained. The apostle’s words point us to suffering as the means employed-”After that ye have suffered awhile.” It is of no use to hope that we shall be well rooted if no rough winds pass over us. Those old gnarlings on the root of the oak tree, and those strange twistings of the branches, all tell of the many storms that have swept over it, and they are also indicators of the depth into which the roots have forced their way. So the Christian is made strong, and firmly rooted by all the trials and storms of life. Shrink not then from the tempestuous winds of trial, but take comfort, believing that by their rough discipline God is fulfilling this benediction to you."  - Charles Spurgeon

When Jesus Makes You Wait in Pain...His Reasons are Only Love

This is a little long, but so worth reading through!  The Lord used it to strengthen and encourage me, and I hope that you will be blessed by it as well!  

May we each find the strength we need to carry on in Him! 

 

The reason there was a “Palm Sunday” was because Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead (John 12:17–18). It was perhaps the most powerful, hope-giving miracle Jesus ever performed during his pre-cross ministry; the capstone sign of who he was (John 5:21–25).
That’s why the Apostle John wrote, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was” (John 11:5–6).
The word “so” connecting those two sentences is stunning. The most loving thing Jesus could do at that moment was to let Lazarus die. But it didn’t look or feel like love to Martha.

---

“Martha, the Teacher has come. He’s near the village.”
Martha’s emotions collided. Just hearing that Jesus was near resuscitated hope in her soul — the same hope she had felt the day she sent word for him to come.
But it was quickly smothered with grief and disappointment. Lazarus had died four days earlier. She had prayed desperately that Jesus would come in time. God had not answered her prayers. What could Jesus do now?
And yet… if anyone could do something, Jesus could. He had the words of eternal life (John 6:68). Martha hurried out.
When she saw Jesus, she could not restrain her grief and love. She collapsed at his feet and sobbed, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Jesus laid his hand on her head.
He had come to Bethany to destroy the devil’s works (1 John 3:8) in Lazarus. He had come to give death a taste of its coming final defeat (1 Corinthians 15:26). He had come to show that now was the time when the dead would hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who heard would live (John 5:25).
Martha did not know all this. Neither did she know that what was about to happen would hasten Jesus’ own death—a death that would purchase her resurrection and both of Lazarus’s. She didn’t know how this weighed on him, how great was his distress until it was accomplished (Luke 12:50).
But Jesus’ wordless kindness soothed her.
When Martha’s sorrowful convulsion had passed she said, “But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”
Jesus gently lifted Martha’s eyes and looked at her with affectionate intensity. “Your brother will rise again.”
His living words revived her hope. Could he mean…? No. She dared not let herself hope in that way. Not after four days.
“I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
Yes. Lazarus would rise again on the last day. Martha had no idea how deeply Jesus longed for that day. But Jesus meant more than that.
He replied, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
The power with which Jesus spoke caused faith to swell in Martha’s soul. She wasn’t sure what this all meant, but as he spoke it was as if death itself was being swallowed up (1 Corinthians 15:54). No one ever spoke like this man (John 7:46).
She answered, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

---

We know how this story from John chapter eleven ends. But in the horrible days of Lazarus’s agonizing illness and in the dark misery of the days following his death, Martha did not know what God was doing. He seemed silent and unresponsive. Jesus didn’t come. It’s likely that she knew word had reached him. She was confused, disappointed, and overwhelmed with grief.
And yet, Jesus delayed precisely because he loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus. He knew that Lazarus’s death and resurrection would give maximum glory to God and his friends would all experience maximum joy in that glory. It would make all their suffering seem light and momentary (2 Corinthians 4:17).
When Jesus makes a trusting saint wait in pain, his reasons are only love. God only ordains his child's deep disappointment and profound suffering in order to give him or her far greater joy in the glory he is preparing to reveal (Romans 8:18).
Before we know what Jesus is doing, circumstances can look all wrong. And we are tempted to interpret God’s apparent inaction as unloving, when in fact God is loving us in the most profound way he possibly can.
So in your anguish of soul, hear Jesus ask with strong affection, “Do you believe this?”
 - Written by Jon Bloom at Desiring God

~Posted By Breanna