If you are going to be used by God, He will take you
through a number of experiences that are not meant for you personally at all.
They are designed to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to
understand what takes place in the lives of others. Because of this process,
you will never be surprised by what comes your way. You say, “Oh, I can’t deal
with that person.” Why can’t you? God gave you sufficient opportunities to
learn from Him about that problem; but you turned away, not heeding the lesson,
because it seemed foolish to spend your time that way.
The sufferings of Christ were not those of ordinary people.
He suffered “according to the will of God” (1 Peter 4:19), having a different point of
view of suffering from ours. It is only through our relationship with Jesus
Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us. When
it comes to suffering, it is part of our Christian culture to want to know
God’s purpose beforehand. In the history of the Christian church, the tendency
has been to avoid being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ. People
have sought to carry out God’s orders through a shortcut of their own. God’s
way is always the way of suffering— the way of the “long road home.”
Are we partakers of Christ’s sufferings? Are we prepared
for God to stamp out our personal ambitions? Are we prepared for God to destroy
our individual decisions by supernaturally transforming them? It will mean not
knowing why God is taking us that way, because knowing would make us
spiritually proud. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through—
we go through it more or less without understanding. Then suddenly we come to a
place of enlightenment, and realize— “God has strengthened me and I didn’t even
know it!”
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