MM Meditation - Learning Obedience Through Suffering

For those of us that are experiencing the Refiner's fire through suffering, our hearts often turn to the Scriptures for the spiritual courage and understanding to endure.

If we only endure, but don't have spiritual understanding of the purpose and power of suffering, we will not be totally refined.

If we have spiritual understanding, but do not use the power of the Spirit to endure, we will not be totally refined.

I have collected various thoughts from well-known and beloved Bible teachers to encourage me on the journey when my faith is weak.  How often a passage, such as the following, will bring me to tears and make me thankful that the Lord chose to bless me with cancer.

***********

Learning Obedience Through Suffering

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

"Though he were a Son,

yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered."

Hebrews 5:8

We are told that the Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffering, therefore we who are sinful, and who are far from being perfect, must not wonder if we are called to pass through suffering, too.

Shall the head be crowned with thorns, and shall the other members of the body be rocked upon the dainty lap of ease? Must Christ pass through seas of his own blood to win the crown, and are we to walk to heaven dryshod in silver slippers?

No, our Master’s experience teaches us that suffering is necessary, and the true born child of God must not, would not, escape it if he might.

 But there is one very comforting thought in the fact of Christ’s "being made perfect through suffering"—it is, that he can have complete sympathy with us. Hebrews 4:15, "He is not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities."

In this sympathy of Christ we find a sustaining power. One of the early martyrs said, "I can bear it all, for Jesus suffered, and he suffers in me now; he sympathizes with me, and this makes me strong." Believer, lay hold of this thought in all times of agony. Let the thought of Jesus strengthen you as you follow in his steps.

Find a sweet support in his sympathy; and remember that, to suffer is an honourable thing—to suffer for Christ is glory. The apostles rejoiced that they were counted worthy to do this.

 Just so far as the Lord shall give us grace to suffer for Christ, to suffer with Christ, just so far does he honour us. The jewels of a Christian are his afflictions. The regalia of the kings whom God hath anointed are their troubles, their sorrows, and their griefs. Let us not, therefore, shun being honoured. Let us not turn aside from being exalted. Griefs exalt us, and troubles lift us up.

2 Timothy 2:12,  "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him."

MM Meditation - Losses and Crosses

"You have made summer and winter." Psalm 74:17

by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

My soul begin this wintry month with your God. The cold snows and the piercing winds all remind you that He keeps His covenant with day and night, and tend to assure you that He will also keep that glorious covenant which He has made with you in the person of Christ Jesus. He who is true to his Word in the revolutions of the seasons of this poor sin polluted world, will not prove unfaithful in his dealings with His own well beloved Son.
Winter in the soul is by no means a comfortable season, and if it be upon you just now it will be very painful to you: but there is this comfort, namely, that the Lord makes it.

He sends the sharp blasts of adversity to nip the buds of expectation:

He scatters the frost like ashes over the once verdant meadows of our joy:

He casts forth His ice like morsels freezing the streams of our delight.

He does it all, He is the great Winter King, and rules in the realms of frost, and therefore you cannot murmur.

 Losses, crosses, heaviness, sickness, poverty, and a thousand other ills, are of the Lord’s sending, and come to us with wise design. Frosts kill noxious insects, and put a bound to raging diseases; they break up the clods, and sweeten the soul. O that such good results would always follow our winters of affliction!

 How we prize the fire just now! how pleasant is its cheerful glow! Let us in the same manner prize our Lord, who is the constant source of warmth and comfort in every time of trouble. Let us draw near to Him, and in Him find joy and peace in believing. Let us wrap ourselves in the warm garments of His promises, and go forth to labours which befit the season, for it were ill to be as the sluggard who will not plough by reason of the cold; for he shall beg in summer and have nothing. “
To rightly endure the losses and crosses of life, we first have to accept and understand that these are from the Lord for our benefit. To waver and doubt, like a wave tossed in the wind, will cause us to chafe under the yoke, and cause us to find a human way of escape, rather than give in to the Creator’s divine plan of conforming us to the image of His own Son.



Does He not promise that our losses will be restored?



Does He not promise that He shares the burden of the crosses?



In the midst of the winter storms of life, we must begin on a firm foundation of faith, trusting the losses and crosses to the One who first suffered loss, and who alone suffered on the Cross.