Good Morning all,
I pray that each one of you had a safe and blessed weekend. I wanted to share just a brief thought, much of what stems from yesterday’s morning sermon. How many times have you asked or someone asked you “Why do we have to suffer”?
The truth of the matter is that sometimes suffering is God’s disciplining hand of chastisement and other times suffering is just a reminder of a past days of sin… However, every form of suffering is not always punishment. Sometimes we come under fire for being a Christian, like the old saying goes: “you are not going to do right and get away with it.” Yet with all that said, sometimes suffering comes into our life as a result of none of the above. Sometimes suffering is allowed of God, in our life, that has absolutely nothing to do with us, but rather for the benefit of others. Consider the three Hebrews boys of Daniel 3 (Meshach, Shadrach and Abed-Nego), they were serving God, doing right when all of sudden they are being threatened with a burning fiery furnace. They were sincere in their stance for the Lord, they were not, under any circumstances going to bow to the false idols nor the image that the king set up. Without a guarantee, a promise or a call on their life form God they took a stand to suffer. You know the rest of the story, they were cast into the fire and the king looked and saw them walking around the midst of the flames with Jesus Christ (the Son of God v.25) walking with them. When they were pulled from that furnace, the smell of smoke was not even on their garments. That is because the hands of the living God surrounded them.
One would have to wonder ‘why in the world did they have to suffer all the frustration, humiliation, emotional distress etc.’? The fact of the matter, they suffered, not for themselves, but for others that would see them and even for the benefit of the king. Because, they were willing to be cast into the fire, without a guarantee of salvation, God was glorified by the kings mouth. Nebuchadnezzar made a proclamation across the land that no one is to speak against the God of Meshach, Shadrach and Abed-Nego. Their suffering was not for themselves, but it was of others and it was for the fact that the One true God would be acknowledged across the world.
So the bottom line is that many times, we are going to suffer in this life… Sometimes it is just part of living in a depraved world, but other times, when there is no rhyme of reason present, just look to the Lord and trust that He is using you to be a blessing to someone else. What a wonderful opportunity in this life, to be used of God to effect others.
Today in History
1821 – Missouri becomes the twenty-fourth state and the first state west of the Mississippi
1846 – President Polk signs legislation establishing the Smithsonian Institute
1869 – O.B. Brown of Malden, Massachusetts, receives the first patent for a movie projector.
1874 – Hebert Clark Hoover, the thirty-first U.S. president, is born in West Branch, Iowa.
1990 – The spacecraft Magellan lands on Venus on the anniversary of the day that Ferdinand Magellan’s ships set sail in 1519 on the first circumnavigation of the globe.
Til the Shout,
Dr. B.J. Stagner Jr.
Pastor
New Testament Baptist Church
No comments:
Post a Comment