Is the Suffering Really Necessary

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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



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