January 29

January 29

“Suffering makes no sense except with Christ Jesus.”  Out of the Silence

When those words first popped into my head I knew they were true.  As a person who must make sense out of any and everything, I needed this truth.  It helps me to understand when I am in the flesh and when I have stepped aside and am allowing the Holy Spirit to work in and through me.  Many say feelings should not be trusted.  Perhaps.   They should not be trusted in the sense that they are speaking Truth (capital T), but they are speaking OUR truth, for our feelings tell us about ourselves.  So if we FEEL we are suffering we need to examine that feeling.  Let God’s light shine on it and see it from His perspective.  This will not take away the trial, but it will take away the feeling of suffering.  For us, to suffer means to be a victim and a victim is powerless, without hope.  But through Christ Jesus’s suffering on the cross we are not without hope and our suffering becomes His suffering and thereby makes sense.

“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit;.........Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same thought, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer by human passions but by the will of God.” 1 Peter 3:18, 4:1,2