“If
He asks you to take up the cross daily, He is asking us to be willing to
suffer. What else can the cross mean?”
Elizabeth Elliot
Recently I was asking God about the hard
times. I was asking Him why we have to
go through them. I started to complain
about the heartache and pain I feel because of them and asked, “why do I have
to feel this way?”. I was unsatisfied
with knowing that God doesn’t cause us pain, but it’s the enemy who wants us to
hurt. In my pain and discomfort I began
to think ‘God has the power to stop the pain and heartache I am feeling, so why don’t you just take it away’.
As I was praying about this the other night
God gave me a couple verses and a new revelation on going through the hard times and the after effects of the hard
times. The first verse was one I knew off by heart.
“I
want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of
sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in this death and so, somehow, to
attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Philippians 3:10-11
‘Oh boy, I know this verse’, this just
happens to be one of the verses I would pray.
Asking God to help me know His power, to feel and understand Christ’s
sufferings, to share that pain with Him. To die to myself and become like
Christ. I prayed this, asking God to
give these things to me. So then I felt God asking me this ‘why Hannah would
you ask to share in my sufferings if you didn’t actually want to share them?’. My eyes were opened. I started to see my
sufferings in a different way. I began to see my sufferings as our sufferings, realizing that Christ has already suffered what I am
suffering.
And then I felt I was suppose
to read James 1:2&3
“Consider
is pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trails of many kinds, because you
know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.”
A reminder to be joyful even
in the hard times, because out of the hard times comes something greater. But
something greater won’t ever come if you don’t get through the hard times.
