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| Pic from about a month ago :) |
This month I'd like celebrate some of the spiritual authorities who speak into my life! God brought them into my life even before I gave my life to Christ, and He greatly used them to turn my heart back to Him! They continue to speak the true and living word of God into my life and right to my spirit, my core.. These would be my Pastor George Mathu, senior pastor Eagles Faith Christian Centre, Heather Lindsey founder of Pinky Promise and John Piper of Desiring God . Today I will mostly be sharing excerpts from John Piper on this subject of pain and suffering in a Christian's life. May they be a blessing to you as they have been to me!!!
Ps : Obedience to God... is everything! Like EVERYTHING!! What is it that God has told you to do? That the Holy Spirit leading you to do? When will you obey? How about today ...how about right now...
The Seminary of Suffering - John Piper
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)This is God’s universal purpose for all Christian suffering: more contentment in God and less satisfaction in self and the world. I have never heard anyone say, “The really deep lessons of life have come through times of ease and comfort.”But I have heard strong saints say, “Every significant advance I have ever made in grasping the depths of God’s love and growing deep with him has come through suffering.”The pearl of greatest price is the glory of Christ.Thus, Paul stresses that in our sufferings the glory of Christ’s all-sufficient grace is magnified. If we rely on him in our calamity and he sustains our “rejoicing in hope,” then he is shown to be the all-satisfying God of grace and strength that he is.If we hold fast to him “when all around our soul gives way,” then we show that he is more to be desired than all we have lost.Christ said to the suffering apostle, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul responded to this: “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).So suffering clearly is designed by God not only as a way to wean Christians off of self and onto grace, but also as a way to spotlight that grace and make it shine. That is precisely what faith does; it magnifies Christ’s future grace.The deep things of life in God are discovered in suffering.
Christ’s Sufferings in Us - John Piper
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.(Colossians 1:24)
Christ has prepared a love offering for the world by suffering and dying for sinners. It is full and lacking in nothing — except one thing, a personal presentation by Christ himself to the nations of the world.
God’s answer to this lack is to call the people of Christ (people like Paul) to make a personal presentation of the afflictions of Christ to the world. In doing this, we “fill up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” We finish what they were designed for, namely, a personal presentation to the people who do not know about their infinite worth.
But the most amazing thing about Colossians 1:24 is how Paul fills up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.
He says that it is his own sufferings that fill up Christ’s afflictions. This means, then, that Paul exhibits the sufferings of Christ by suffering himself for those he is trying to win. In his sufferings they see Christ’s sufferings.
Here is the astounding upshot: God intends for the afflictions of Christ to be presented to the world through the afflictions of his people.
God really means for the body of Christ, the church, to experience some of the suffering he experienced so that when we proclaim the Cross as the way to life, people will see the marks of the Cross in us and feel the love of the Cross from us.
Rejoicing in Pain - John Piper“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matthew 5:11–12)Christian Hedonism says that there are different ways to rejoice in suffering as a Christian. All of them are to be pursued as an expression of the all-sufficient, all-satisfying grace of God. One way of rejoicing in suffering comes from fixing our minds firmly on the greatness of the reward that will come to us in the resurrection. The effect of this kind of focus is to make our present pain seem small in comparison to what is coming: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans8:18; cf. 2 Corinthians 4:16–18). In making the suffering tolerable, rejoicing over our reward will also make love possible. “Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great” (Luke 6:35). Be generous with the poor “and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:14) Another way of rejoicing in suffering comes from the effects of suffering on our assurance of hope. Joy in affliction is rooted in the hope of resurrection, but our experience of suffering also deepens the root of that hope. For example, Paul says, “We exult in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces proven genuineness, and genuineness produces hope” (Romans 5:3–4). Here, Paul’s joy is not merely rooted in his great reward, but in the effect of suffering to solidify his hope in that reward. Afflictions produce endurance, and endurance produces a sense that our faith is real and genuine, and that strengthens our hope that we will indeed gain Christ. |
The Meaning of Suffering - John Piper
He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. (Hebrews 11:26)
We do not choose suffering simply because we are told to, but because the One who tells us to describes it as the path to everlasting joy.
He beckons us into the obedience of suffering not to demonstrate the strength of our devotion to duty or to reveal the vigor of our moral resolve or to prove the heights of our tolerance for pain, but rather to manifest, in childlike faith, the infinite preciousness of his all-satisfying promises.
Moses “[chose] rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin . . . for he was looking to the reward” (Hebrews 11:25–26). Therefore, his obedience glorified the God of grace, not the resolve to suffer.
This is the essence of Christian Hedonism. In the pursuit of joy through suffering, we magnify the all-satisfying worth of the Source of our joy. God himself shines as the brightness at the end of our tunnel of pain.
If we do not communicate that he is the goal and the ground of our joy in suffering, then the very meaning of our suffering will be lost.
The meaning is this: God is gain. God is gain. God is gain.
The chief end of man is to glorify God. And it is truer in suffering than anywhere else that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
And even suffering has an eternal, good purpose: “This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen, ” (2 Corinthians 4:17–18). - John Knight ....since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Every person and every season carries its own set of hard time, beautiful times, tests and struggles. - Heather Lindsey
And to close, here is something for you to meditate on....
"There is no book that is more relevant to human existence other than the word of God- the Bible. There is no book that speaks to who we are and where we are going like the word of God.
Are you relating to a historic God or a now God? Learn to stop and ask God ' what is Your rhema word? ' For we live by every word that comes from the mouth of God..we live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. God is a now God. He lives in the timezone of now. "
Pastor George Mathu.
God bless you.
Love Ree.
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Ps: If you are ever in Nairobi and are looking for a church family to visit with, during your short or long stay. My church Eagle's Faith Christian Centre ( EFCC) would be privileged to host you! OR if you live in Nairobi and are looking for a church family or if you simply want to visit and send our love back to your home church family, get in touch with me for directions, or Get Directions Here !
