Did you know that the course you are on in life –  God has allowed to help you learn to perserve? “Perseverance must finish its works in your life so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything”. This is recorded in the book of James chapter 1 verse 4. The bible passages that pictured what sufferings are all about and pre-informed every Christians what lies ahead are James 5:7-11, Rom 8: 35-39.

Every genuine child of God must pass through sufferings, trials and temptations. If it is inevitable that children of God must suffer, then that means that God must have prepared a way of escape and we need to keep seeking Him and praying to Him to get the way of escape that He has prepared for us. As you seek God, we suggest you ask Him to teach you how you should live in times o your f trouble, persecution and trials if it seems like God is not answering your prayers and you are having trouble waiting on Him to act or deliver you. When we suffer for righteousness and Christ’s sake, we should count it as joy because we partake in Christ’s agony so that we may share in His eternal glory. Rom 5:2b says, “And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God”. NO SUFFERING, NO GLORY or NO CROSS, NO CROWN or NO PAIN, NO GAIN are slogans in all Christians lives and Romans 5:2 focuses on is what we should do when we are passing through trials and temptations for Christ’s sake.

In the texts outlined above, many things have been brought to our knowledge and the people who share with us their own experience and what they did to earn the applause of God in their sufferings, are worthy of being emulated. In fact, Christ has set for us a path-way; He is our role model who when beaten did not retaliate, He was crushed but not destroyed, He was spitted upon, and without a word, while on the cross still blessed the people, save yet another soul and prayed for the men crucifying Him. It is on this meekness of Christ that many people confessed that He is indeed, the Son of God. Mustn’t we do the same?

In a film titled, MY CONFESSION produced by EVOM, two casts were placed side-by-side. They passed though tough times but ended up with different conclusions.

One saying, ‘God, you are kind, great, wonderful, I will still continue to love and serve you. You will still be my God”. The other fellow sees God as wicked God who in spite of His son’s or daughter’s commitment to Him could still permit evil or calamity to befall him/her. What is your own conclusion about God when you are passing through difficulties and hard times that involve a lot of long term suffering? Do you emulate Christ when He suffered or do you get angry at God and ask why?

Many people always want to avoid sufferings/persecutions and in fact, they always flee from any form of its appearances. A lot of churches will not focus on the long term aspect of suffering.  Marriage vows are changed or distorted to avoid the ‘worst’ part of it. Many churches teaches life without pain and sufferings once life is surrended to Christ.  Life without suffering does not exist, Christ passed through several episodes of suffering and God either delivered Him out of them all or from them all. Christ left words behind for us that state ‘in this world there will trials and tribulations, but we should be of good courage, that He has overcame the world’. In other words surrendering your life to Christ doesn’t exempt you from suffering, it assures you of Christ’s presence in and through the suffering to make it all work out for your good and God’s glory.  What a good Savior we have in Jesus Christ and how wonderful of Him to give us all such a reliable promise!

Conclusively, then He said to them all: ‘if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it’ (Luke 9: 23, 24). This verse tells us how significant our suffering is. In fact, some martyrs have lost their lives in the course, only to take them back at his coming. Paul said, let us focus on Christ and run patiently the race that has been set before us. While in suffering, you must endure, persevere, be calm, count it all joy and believe that Christ has won already, when He said, ‘IT IS FINISHED’.  Thus, we are fighting FROM victory and not FOR victory. Halleluiah!