January 27

“We all endure suffering to some degree, but the good news is that through it we can become like Jesus....Don’t make all your decisions and invest everything you have into avoiding hardship.  God did not spare His own Son.  How can we expect Him to spare us?”  H. Blackaby, Experiencing God Day-By-Day, 1/27

It can only be the power of God that the very question I finally made public yesterday would be found by me in a book printed five years ago!  How good it is that God makes even clearer His word to me!  Blackaby’s words have helped clarify for me the distinction between my flesh, the container, and my soul, which is the container for God’s Spirit.  When scripture says God did not spare His own Son what I hear is God did not save His earthly container.  The truth that presents itself here is that my flesh will inevitably endure suffering, but the good news is “through it we can become like Jesus”.   Our flesh can become like Jesus’ flesh.  Our flesh can never become sanctified, but our behavior in the flesh, when it has endured, can be Christlike.  But even as I can rejoice in this, for God’s sake, I am even more overjoyed with the fact that I, my soul, is already sanctified and sealed.  It is seeing myself as two separate entities--flesh and spirit--that I can live the victorious life in Christ.

“More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”  Romans 5:4,5