Suffering for Christ

Life and I are starting to become great friends.


Through my process of recovery, I have been spending some time in the Word and reading about suffering. In the past, I have had a bad relationship with suffering. Actually, I take that back. After alot of bad things happened to me, I started to believe that God was punishing me, that I had done something wrong to deserve the bad things that happened to me. I grew a huge guilt complex that carried me through college and then into the real world and the more bad things that happened to me, the more I believed I deserved it and started to expect bad things to happen to me. Needless to say, suffering grew a bad name with me.


So I started to read about suffering in the Bible and realized that Jesus did alot of suffering too. Alot of godly people in the Bible did alot of suffering, and that’s when I realized... suffering happens to good people too, it’s part of living in a fallen world, and none of these people were being punished by God... they were being tested by God, which means I was also not being punished by God, which felt really good to realize. So lately, I’m starting to understand that my suffering is just part of life and a test of my faith, not a punishment by God because I deserve bad things. No, God wants good things to happen to me, and He wants me to succeed and be happy. So instead of feeling like a victim of my suffering, I can rise above it and conquer it with faith that God will intervene and provide.


Now that’s a much better relationship to have with suffering.

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