SUFFERING FOR OTHERS

 

If you want to minister the Gospel, you will be required to endure a lot of training, but not just mental training. We must also endure trials, the fires of purification:

·       These [trials] have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:7)

However, we not only suffer trials for our own refinement, we also suffer them for our brethren, as strange as this might seem:

·       [God] comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. (2 Corinthians 1:4-6)

Our sufferings invite our Lord to deliver us:

·       The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all.

(Psalm 34:18-19)

During these times, we learn about God and the assurance of His deliverance. These truths, the comfort of God, we can then pass on to others.

The fact that our sufferings will produce the grace to love others likens us to Christ our Savior, who had suffered for the sins of the world.

While we might feel alone in our suffering, we are actually becoming a conduit over which the mercies of our Lord flow upon the wounds of our brethren. What a great honor!

This is a divine validation for all that we have suffered. It means that our infirmities have served a glorious purpose, as they train us to look at the Transcendent and away from obsessing on our daily fears and frustrations (2 Corinthians 4:16).