Hanon hurts my hands, and self-pity my heart...

I never know what to post when I'm at school as opposed to being home. All I can say is I'm doing school. And more school.

Last night was opening night of pride and prejudice. It went pretty well! It was funny though... I'm supposed to have a bonnet for the first scene but we couldn't find one, so I am supposed to change my line from, "how do you like my new bonnet?" to "how do you like my new jacket?"... I practiced the first one too much... so in other words Lizzie said that my non-existent bonnet was, "sweetly pretty"... whoops... :p

My heart right now is really in the article below. It is an excerpt from one of my favorite books, a book that really changed my life. My feelings want to deny that suffering is anything to be considered good, but it is yet another aspect of our lives to glorify God with, and if we do, He will strengthen and shape us into well equipped and persevering Christians. In fact, I think God is glorified most in our suffering and difficult days, because when we are at our weakest, we allow Him to come into our lives and be our strength! If only we could have that attitude at all times. So, read and ponder. It really will change your outlook on pain, frustration, and suffering.

SHOULD CHRISTIANS HAVE TO SUFFER?

Many modern- day evangelistic efforts have promised sinners unending peace, joy, a home in heaven, and a prosperous life between here and there, if they will simply come to Jesus. That kind of preaching, stripped of the call to discipleship and cross bearing, has produced a generation of soft, flabby "disciples" who have no stomach for the battles of the Christian life. When their hopes are dashed by the inevitable trials and tribulations, they whimper and whine and make a dash for the quickest escape route.

By convincing us that our suffering is undeserved or unnecessary, the Enemy succeeds in getting us to resent and resist the will and purposes of God.

The message that was preached by the Lord Jesus Himself and by the apostles who followed Him was a call to take up the cross; it was a call to sign up for battle; it was a call to suffer.

The apostle Paul taught that suffering is an essential course in God's curriculum for all believers: "We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22).

Arthur Mathews served as a missionary in China from 1938-49, when the Communists took control. He was one of the last China Inland Mission missionaries to leave China in 1953, after being held under house arrest for four years with his wife and daughter. His writings relfect a commitment to self-denial and a willingness to embrace the plan and purposes of God in suffering:

"We tend to look at the circumstances of life in terms of what they may do to our cherished hopes and convenience, and we shape our decisions and reactions accordingly. When a problem threatens, we rush to God, not to seek his perspective, but to ask him to deflect the trouble. Our self- concern takes priority over whatever it is that God might be trying to do thorugh the trouble....

An escapist generation reads security, prosperity, and physical well- being as evidences of God's blessing. Thus when he puts suffering and afflictions into our hands, we misread his signals and misinterpret his intentions."

If we do not trust the heart and intentions of God, we will naturally resist suffering. But, as seventeenth- century Puritan author William Law exhorts us, we must learn to welcome and embrace suffering as a pathway to sanctification and a doorway into greater intimacy with God:

"Receive every inward and outward trouble, every disappointment, pain, uneasiness, temptation, darkness, and desolation, with both thy hands, as a true opportunity and blessed occasion of dying to self, and entering into a fuller fellowship with thy self- denying, suffering Saviour."

The Truth is, God is far more interested in our holiness than in our immediate, temporal happiness-- He knows that apart from being holy, we can never be truly happy.

The Truth is, it is impossible to be holy apart from suffering. Even Jesus Himself, during His years here on earth, was in some unexplainable way made "perfect through suffering" (Hebrews 2:10); and "although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered" (Hebrews 5:8). We say we want to be like Jesus, and then we resist the very instrument God chooses to fulfill that desire.

All the New Testament authors recognized that there is a redemptive, sanctifying fruit that cannot be produced in our lives apart from suffering. In fact, Peter goes as far as to insist that suffering is our calling-- not just for some select group of Christian leaders or martyrs but for every child of God: "To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps" (1 Peter 2:21).

True joy is not the absence of pain but the sanctifying, sustaining presence of the Lord Jesus in the midst of the pain. Through the whole process, whether it be a matter of days, weeks, months, or years, we have His promise:

"The God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast."
1 Peter 5:10

-Nancy Leigh Demoss