Pleasing God, Making Disciples of Jesus Christ

His Love Demands It

2 CORINTHIANS 1:8-11 – For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. 11 You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

THEME OF THE DAY. HIS LOVE DEMANDS IT. Nothing is more resisted; more complained over; and makes Christians more impatient, irritated, and frustrated than when God puts us in situations we cannot control or change. I know I don’t leap around my home and office in circumstances that are hard, challenging, and tempt me to discouragement, depression, even despair. I don’t start singing, “Oh, happy in Jesus, all the day long. I am so rejoicing in the pain I am in!” And you probably don’t put on your “happy slippers” either when life tends to go south on the highways of suffering and affliction. But . . . we should. The Apostle Paul writes, Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Romans 5:1-5).

Go back to the passage in Romans and pay attention to what the Apostle says justified in Christ people do. They rejoice in sufferings. Why? They look beyond the pain of suffering to the chain of good results in their lives – endurance, character, and hope; the very things we need in our hearts to make our witness for Jesus in a hurting and dying world valid. Think about it. What is our world full of? Despair and giving up (lack of endurance); unbridled immorality (lack of character); and hopelessness (lack of hope). That is how our world responds to suffering and pain. But not the believer. We are able to see God at work in and through our suffering for good purposes. But here is an important point to remember about our circumstances and situations causing us pain that we cannot control and change. They come from the Lord. He sent them. His love demands it.

In today’s scripture, the Apostle Paul “got it”. He understood this work of God in his life for his good. His language paints a vivid picture of the pain he was in over circumstance he could not change – For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. I realize this is a difficult mountain to climb in the Christian life, yet, climb it we must and God will take us on the climb. Like Paul, there will be situations and circumstances that bring us to the end of our rope so to speak. And that is exactly where God wants us! In that place, we grow. Remember, trying times are given by God to become teaching times in the lives of His children.

PRAYER: “Father, forgive me when I fail to trust You in the midst of trying times that are meant to be teaching times.”

QUOTE: “God puts us in situations we cannot control or change to teach us who is really in control and makes change.”