Monday, October 15, 2012

1 Corinthians 15:58 Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.



All suffering, one way or another, is from Satan.

When you reach heaven, all pain and suffering will be gone. Although we believe this idea to be true, our pain and suffering tries to block our belief in heaven as a real place in real time. The satanic evil causing pain is insidious. Once we understand the purpose of Satan in putting pain upon us is to undermine our faith, we can then come back and stand against the influence of pain upon our heart and soul. Christ may not make our pain go away. What Christ will do is give us power to never relent, never give in, and never give up as we battle Satan, who makes us suffer.

The suffering of Christ was caused by human sin. Human sin was the result of Satan coming into the garden of Eden and causing Adam and Eve to fall away from God. Satan attacks each of us, just as Satan attacked Adam and Eve. All Christ's pain and suffering was put upon Christ at the hands of Satan. Satan was not content to make human beings fall. Satan wanted Christ to fall. Satan wanted Christ to renounce His Father in heaven. However, Christ has such love for each of us Christ would not turn away from His Father in heaven. Christ will never turn away from any of us. What will be our response? Will we remain rebellious and always turn away from Christ, or will we change and turn toward our Lord who suffered and died for each of us?

Many of our rewards for staying faithful during suffering come to us when we reach Heaven. We do not know and we will never know how wonderful heaven will be. We will know when we cross over from death to life everlasting the full and complete power, love, and light of Christ. We must stay faithful not to get a reward on earth or in heaven. We must stay faithful because Christ loves us and we love Him. We must stay faithful because we want to serve Him, to give to Him, rather than to get from Him.

How we experience joy and peace in pain is a mystery. However, our experience and testimony about this mystery confirms our experience. In our human experience, we find our ability to stand against pain and suffering is enhanced when we begin to surrender our pain and suffering up to God. Surrendering up to God is not easy. Surrendering up to God may be the most difficult task any of us ever accomplish. However, if we can let God touch our hurt, we will experience His joy and peace, even when we hurt.

Although it may sound ludicrous in the beginning when your pain is the worst, as you progress in the healing process in Christ's arms, later on the scars from the hurt can be counted as blessings. After we have surrendered up our pain, we can experience the healing love of Christ. At the moment we surrender up our pain, at the very instant we let Christ touch our pain, Christ also touches us. This moment of touching, this instant, when Christ's presence in our pain, is the instant we can then exclaim as His blessing in our life.

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