Pause:
As I enter this time of prayer, I put away all distractions, take a deep breath, and listen to what the Holy Spirit is going to speak to me about today.
Pray this Psalm, repeating the words slowly, a few times:
‘I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.’
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~Psalm 130:5
Reflect:
As we approach Good Friday, we continue today to ask for an eternal perspective on our current sufferings. The apostle Paul knew suffering when he wrote:
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.
God has a higher purpose for us in our suffering. We suffer so that we may be identified with Christ. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with much grief. How can we experientially be identified with Christ, who was beaten, crucified, and the subject of much opposition, if we have nothing but ease as we live our days? In order to truly know Christ, we must experience suffering.
Suffering also weans us off of this world and causes us to focus on the world to come. It is important that we set our minds on things above and not on things of this earth. Suffering has the ability to uproot us from becoming too attached to the things of this world. Suffering is also a part of God’s sanctification of the believer. God uses suffering to purge us of certain wrong attitudes and priorities. Suffering drops us to our knees in prayer and dependence upon God. The Christian life is not about the subtraction of suffering, but rather the addition of grace to go through suffering.
How does it make you feel that your life is being built into something so much bigger and more beautiful that you could ever imagine, through the endurance of suffering?
Ask: Am I looking through the wrong end of the telescope; focusing in on my own world here and now, instead of the universe of new possibilities to come?
Prayer: Dear Jesus, thank you that my ‘present sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory’ to come. That everything I’m going through in this life will be massively outweighed by the blessings that You are preparing for me next.
(pause)
Yield: The hymn, ‘When I Survey,’ by Charles Wesley:
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,Save in the Death of Christ my God:All the vain Things that charm me most,I sacrifice them to his Blood.
Were the whole Realm of Nature mine,That were a Present far too small;Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my Soul, my Life, my All.