I have always viewed suffering as a terrible thing, and have done everything in my power to escape it for as long as I can remember. Lately, I have to ask myself, why is suffering such a bad thing, something I have been so desperate to escape? According to Romans 5:3-5, suffering is actually a good thing, because it produces endurance, character, and hope. Hope is a confident expectation, not in what we can see, but what is unseen; that is in the coming of the Lord, the salvation we have in Him, and the eternal life we will receive…
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Two years ago, in the midst of the despair in my suffering, Jesus spoke to me saying “I am making all things new”, and He gave me this verse: Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:19 I wanted to believe Him. I needed to believe Him, and I held on to that promise choosing to hope in something that looked utterly impossible. Yet as the days, weeks, and months passed by, I never saw a change…
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As a new Christian, I could not understand suffering. I believed that if God loved me, He would relieve me of all suffering and give me a life of happiness and fulfillment. I believed that He was a good and loving God, and therefore naturally, He would protect me from every bad thing. What I didn’t understand was that suffering is not actually a bad thing, but a part of our walk as believers in Christ Jesus. One of the things that bothered me the most about suffering was the feeling that it made my life worthless; that all of…
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When personal tragedy strikes, it can be very easy to be so overcome with grief and anger that it can block out the truth about God. I have seen it happen many times, even in my own life. As a matter of fact, the devil counts on using tragedy to steal us away. I have been working diligently to overcome the trauma of my past for almost four years now. Through it all Jesus has blessed me abundantly, by taking my hand and walking me through this life. He has renewed me in so many ways, yet it has been…