There are instances like sickness, death and others actions that are suffering but that is not what we are talking about today. All of us come to a place in our lives that we become tired of suffering. We do our best to fix the situation but fail. We start to cry out and beg God for deliverance. However, the problem isn’t concerning God’s inability to deliver. Rather, it is our understanding of suffering for Jesus.
Jesus suffered because He was in the process of bringing the Kingdom of God to Earth. It was His obedience to the Father that created the resistance, the opposition, and suffering. Jesus’ perfect obedience created the cosmic level war.
Our suffering most often has nothing to do with being obedient to the Father. We suffer because of our dysfunctional self-protective mechanisms, mistakes, dumb decisions, and following our fleshly desires. Derek Prince once said, “Jesus will rescue you from your enemies, but He will not rescue you from your friends.” As humans, we like to make these things our friends instead of our enemies.
I am not saying that God will never save you from the consequences of your willful sin or ignorant mistakes. God (and my wife) knows that I have had some amazing rescues from both. In those moments I have had to repent for my actions, heart attitudes, and change habits. In Psalm 139 King David wrote, “Search me and know me, see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” We need to be asking the Lord to show us where to repent.
Our actions have consequences. If you do not like the consequences you are experiencing, then you are going to have to change the way you think. Changing the way you think, will transform your motivations. Only then, will your actions follow suit.
God has an agenda, to reconcile all things to Himself. In other words, He desires to remove all barriers of sin and defilement that have kept us from Him. Our actions, even the good ones, are still acts of self-will if God has not asked them of us.
Our culture tells us, “If I do right, everything will be right.” Therefore, when things are going well, we feel right. When things start going wrong, we believe God is obviously not holding up His end of the bargain. If that’s what we believe, even subconsciously, then the problem for us is that we have not totally surrendered our lives to God. We are conforming to the world’s value system when we believe God has to make our lives trouble free and comfortable. This view of suffering totally narcissistic. That makes the contrast of peace and fear in John 16:33 so profound.
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble … but fear not, for I have overcome the world.”
The struggle with suffering is to discern if we are actually suffering for Jesus or really just being inconvenienced. Are we suffering because of actual demonic opposition or is it due to the natural consequences of a mistake? Advancing in the Kingdom will include ups and downs. It is only the peace of Jesus Christ that can bring rest to our souls.
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