Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.

We tend to be fearful of difficult circumstances and trouble. It has been my experience that underneath this fear is not merely a revulsion to hard things, but a faulty belief system that equates suffering/pain with God’s lack of care or concern. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Trouble and trial in your life doesn’t mean that God does not care about you; it doesn’t mean that God is upset and is trying to punish you.

My friends, the Bible teaches almost the exact opposite. “Those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines” (Hebrews 12) or we might say “trains” or “disciples”.

Trials are not contrary to God’s love but are the means by which He works that love in us.

You have to ask yourself the question, what is the goal of life? What is God trying to produce in me? Well, God’s goal is that we might share in His character, and so share in His joy. We are to become like Jesus, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame (Hebrews 12:2).

Thus, we are not saved from trouble in this life; we are saved through it. We are not saved from suffering; we are saved through suffering. We need only look to Jesus’s suffering for us on the cross to see that. After all, it was by His suffering that He saved us.

Jesus put it this way, “…in Me you may have peace. Here on earth, you will have trials and troubles. But take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

You see, our fear makes us run from suffering. Looking at Jesus drives us to embrace it.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.”
~ 1 Peter 1:6-9 (NASB)