This week's title is "Ready Faith" and begins with the question, "When have you chosen to endure difficulty for a future benefit?"
I can say that I haven't done this nearly enough! I can think of many instances where I should endure difficulties for a future benefit or times when I started out ready to be strong but then caved and gave up. It's just hard to see that the pain and suffering for a time will reap benefits in the future.
My current failures:
*Potty-training my two year old!
*Teaching my kids to put away things when they are finished with them
(I could still use this lesson myself!)
*Couch to 5K
*Diet after diet, plan after plan
*And tonight I totally failed to plan, prepare, and serve a meal at all. Cereal, leftovers, bread dipped in marinara all counted as dinner tonight. For real.
What God's word says:
And who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong. 1 Peter 3:16-17
Can I just say that I love that this word comes from Peter, my current Bible crush. He's saying who can do you harm if you are living and doing for Jesus. But he's the same Peter that denied Christ before the crucifixion, not once, but three times because he was afraid! He ran away. He hid. He cried. He did not understand. But evidently he had a change of heart, literally! What happened to cause this change? Sufferings in his life!
I read a book a few years ago called "The Insanity of God" by Nik Ripken. This book was told from Ripken's perspective as a missionary who went to third world countries to document the suffering of Christians who endured persecution. What he found astounded him. In the face of such public humiliations and physical sufferings by Christians in those countries, Christianity spread. It was and is like wildfire under persecution. Because people you love, day after day, suffer physically, emotionally, and financially for Christ but yet at the same time their hope and joy multiplies, they sign more songs of praise, they defy human nature and don't turn and run. They have strength and hope and talk of a glorious future. Wouldn't you want what they have? I would!!! What did they know that so many of us don't? Where did their strength and passions come from? I think that it comes from this little, but powerful, part of the passage:
"but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts"
When I acknowledge Christ as Lord I am saying that I surrender to him because he is holy, set apart, the only one of his kind, the one who deserves all praise and glory. If he sees fit that I suffer who am I to question it? And when I suffer, I do not have to fear what I am up against. The hope I have in Christ conquers all the fears I have of those that cause me to suffer or want to harm me.
This is why Joseph did not fear when he was sold into slavery, why Moses was able to stand before Pharaoh, why David went up against a giant with a few stones, why Stephen continued to preach even while being stoned to death, why missionaries travel to places where Christianity is illegal, why Christians held home churches in communist Russia at the same time they were being thrown in prison, why a mom can endure prison in a foreign country even while pregnant and awaiting her death sentence for proclaiming Christ as her Lord.
Do they have something that I don't? Am I truly willing to suffer to advance the cause of Christ? That is a hard question to answer while I'm sitting all cozy in my air-conditioned home with Internet, a refrigerator full of food, and three cars parked outside. But what if it was all suddenly gone. What if I suffered great loss? What then would my testimony be?
Today I can truly say that I think I would choose the suffering. That certainly would not have been my answer three years ago. But a change has happened in my heart too, just like Peter. Christ is sanctified as Lord of my Life in my heart.
I know that He is who He said He is and He will do what He says He will do.
Therefore, in the realization that I am going to be annoyed and have inconveniences and suffer and maybe even persecuted for my beliefs and the actions associated with those beliefs, I will do as He commands in the rest of this passage. I will be ready to share what Christ has done for me and why I had a change of heart. I will tell others about the hope they can have in Christ. I will do what He says is right. And in all of these things, with Him as my Lord, I shall have no fear.
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