Message based on I Peter 4:12-19. Is it ever God’s will for his children to suffer? Without question, Christians have been suffering since the beginning of the church. Suffering comes in different forms for different reasons. Peter wrote to Christians who were beginning to be persecuted for their faith. He himself would be martyred under Nero. I have heard preachers say that God’s children can completely avoid pain in this life. Some Christians are suffering because they follow Christ. Others suffer in various ways while we serve Christ. Sometimes we suffer because of foolish choices. Peter doesn’t tell us why we suffer, but he does help us to know how to suffer: without surprise, without shame, without apology.
Quotes:
C. S. Lewis: Pain is God’s megaphone to awaken a slumbering world – God whispers in our pleasure . . . and shouts in our pain.
Alistair Begg: We should neither court suffering nor complain about it. Instead, we should see it as one of the means God chooses to employ in order to make us increasingly useful to our Master.
Amy Carmichael:
Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land;
I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star.
Hast thou no scar?
Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers; spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned.
Hast thou no wound?
No wound? No scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And piercèd are the feet that follow Me.
But thine are whole; can he have followed far
Who hast no wound or scar?
John Stott: Do you want to be holy? Then you will suffer.
Tertullian: The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
Henri Nouwen: It would be just another illusion to believe that reaching out to God will free us from pain and suffering.Often, indeed, it will take us where we rather would not go. But we know that without going there we will not find our life.
Hershael York: has it ever occurred to you that the very thing that you wish the Lord would take away from you might be the very reason God can use you?
An Amish Bishop: prosperity has often been fatal to Christianity but persecution never.
Heritage Singers: You are working to see, if when I’m put through the fire, I come out shining like gold. O Lord, please don’t ever stop working in me till you see I can be all you want me to be. I am willing Lord to be just exactly what you want me to be.
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