*Listen to the Show notes and podcast transcript with this multi-language player.
Summary:
Walking in the footsteps of Jesus begins with learning obedience. The things that we go through mold us into what God wants. Suffering is used by the Father to develop us into His sons. The result is a relationship in His presence and God pouring out His holiness on us.
Show Notes:
Do you believe God feels pain? He feels pain when He sees what has happened to His creation, especially the miserable plight that the human race has manifested.
Why do people suffer? It may not have been the plan for individuals, but some seem to open up in a deeper way through suffering. This is a mystery.
As a forerunner, Christ experienced suffering as he matured, not just when he was crucified.
As Paul wrote, it's a privilege to help fill up the sufferings of Christ.
He disciplines for our own good so that we may share in His holiness. It’s our choice.
Quotes:
We see in the gospels how Jesus thought and reacted.
“How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.
Suffering has a way of either opening your heart wide, or it closes it.
He allows you to go through it because you're going to open up to His love in a deeper way.
The pain and sufferings we go through are allowing us to touch a part of God that is real too, that nobody wants to talk about or even acknowledge.
We're becoming more like the Lord, who became more like His Father.
This is what we're in this process of. We're becoming more like our Father who created us after His image.
References:
Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am supplementing what is lacking [a]in Christ’s afflictions in behalf of His body, which is the church.
Then I said,
“Woe to me, for I am ruined!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I live among a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of armies.”
“That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.”
“The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children heirs also heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”
“”He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
Takeaway:
Part of our growing process with the Father can be quite painful. Sometimes He uses the things we go through to mold us into what He created us to be. We are following after Christ who is our pattern Son who learned obedience by the things He suffered.
