Is the Suffering Really Necessary

-

 

As I shared Monday conflict, unkindness, cruelty, and suffering are areas I prefer to avoid, but in the Holy Week devotional montage I referenced  listen to how they describe the necessity of suffering.

"The only Savior who truly saves, only saves through suffering. The cross was the only means of making us sinners right before a holy God. Our salvation was purchased with suffering, and it will be sealed and preserved with suffering (James 1:2–4), not comfort. We are promised comfort in the Christian life  (2 Cor. 1:4), but not the cheap, temporal imitation we’ve grown accustomed to in our modern world.

If we come to the crucified one expecting him to make life easier and more comfortable, we’re not listening to him. Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).


The disciples certainly imagined there would be opposition in Jerusalem, but not like this. They expected a hostile takeover—and that did happen—but they expected Rome would be the bruised one, not the King. They were happy to have an opposed King, but not a rejected one, certainly not one who was betrayed, tortured, and executed.


Jesus did not come to purchase the approval of others. No, he “was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised” (Isa. 53:3). 


Why? Because it is God’s approval we desperately need. And God’s approval doesn’t come by popular opinion, but by divine intervention—the substitution of his own Son in our place. 


We were saved through rejection (Isa. 53:3), and by God’s grace, we will be carried and delivered through rejection (Matt. 10:22). The call to Calvary—to follow Jesus—is a call to die, and rise again. It’s a call to everlasting next-life gain through temporary this-life loss. 


Salvation isn’t about securing our unique and selfish desires and ambitions on this earth, but about securing and preparing our souls for another world, a new creation built and preserved for our glory in God’s and our satisfaction in him.


To truly live, we must surrender to the King we really needed, not the one we might have imagined for ourselves."


Again and again I see in life how our expectations open us up to disappointment. The first followers of Jesus had expectations of what their King would do to make things right. But they had no clue of what needed to be righted...their hearts.  God's way, as uncomfortable as it is at times (as it was for Jesus), is the best way to fulfill our expectations beyond our ability to comprehend. No one knows us better, nor our needs, than our Creator and He is a good, good, Father.  Thank You for the cross.


The Songs  (You may want to save some for tomorrow.)


Crown Him with Many Crowns Chris Tomlin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xHVtE3BT0c


Thank You for the Cross- Life Music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMweYRopdd4


Suffering He Knows Jeremy Camp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsccUg4TDd8


Good Good Father  Chris Tomlin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlsQrycKKsY



Popular posts from this blog

She Fought the Good Fight

-
Image
February 27 Bible Gateway's verse yesterday was: This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him . 1 John 4:9 A fitting verse for the day my everyday friend, soul sister, monster of the faith and mischievous partner in crime, Kaye, left this world behind and headed to her heavenly home. My husband was able to be by her bedside and said he knew she heard the words of our faith that he shared. Her sweet daughter held the phone up to her ear so I could say good-bye and the brightest single star you have ever seen shown through my bedroom window as she exited this earth! Yesterday, my heart literally ached so badly that I told the Lord, "Take me too!" Wouldn't she have been surprised if I had snuck up on her in heaven and said, "Thought you were going somewhere without me, did ya." When we received the call she was ready to go, I called out to the Lord for comfort and He led me to the Bible Gat
Read more

Marriage Matters #1

-
Image
One of life's deepest hurts is when the one you love is unfaithful. Forty years ago, I remember an older friend, whose wife had been unfaithful and left him for another man saying to me..."Boo, I hope you never experience having the person you love and are married to, living 8 blocks away loving someone else." Deep hurt. They divorced. The wife of another friend of ours was having an affair with a fellow church member and a neighbor of theirs who lived 5 blocks away. She moved in with this man and our friend said one evening he was walking by the house where they were living together and saw them sitting at a table having a candlelight dinner. Ugh. The torment. I've always said it would be aweful to find out the person you were married to and  loved deeply loved another.  Hmm. We are the bride of Christ.  Is He our first love? 2 Peter 2:14 says: They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed
Read more

Are You Sinking... Being Tossed About?

-
Image
  A text came in from our neighbor recently, on a cold blustery day, when I was home with a stomach bug and awful headache. He said, "My canoe blew off our dock and has floated over to your shore."  And I'm thinking..."And you want me to do what?" I explained my husband was at work, but could help in the afternoon. I went to the window and could see the boat being tossed back and forth along our shore line. One minute it was close to our main dock and the next the winds had shifted and it was 200 feet in the opposite direction.  What I then realized is it had been taking on water. A text came again that he was in his car and driving around to our property.  Climbing out of my night shirt, I put on warm ups, UGGS boots and a hooded coat and limped outside to see how I could help. When I arrived to the shore line, the neighbor had tossed a 3 prong hook tied to a rope into the boat and was pulling it to the shore with one hand.  He had recently had hand surgery and
Read more