Sometimes God wants us to choose suffering. Yes, I'll say that again. Sometimes God wants us to choose suffering on purpose. Just because a situation really stinks doesn't mean that God is telling you to leave. If anything, he calls us into the fray more often then he calls us out of it. Suffering is exactly where God meets us. It's what puts us in touch with the one who gave us this life in the first place and has a plan for where things are going. Too often we fail to seek Jesus out until things are really bad and we're pretty sure they'll only get worse before they get any better. But if you were God, which would you rather have: a mildly content person who's oblivious to your existence or a hurting person who seeks you out because there's no other place to go?-Sarah Arthur.
It's so true in our lives that sometimes God wants us to chose suffering because it will open our hearts and minds to something that we have never seen before. I think that sometimes we choose not to believe this because we think that suffering always has to be something terrible. When i was in South Africa we helped out at this guys soup kitchen that he ran out of his garage. We went into the poor community not to far from his house and served children who didn't know when they were going to get another meal after that, it broke my heart to know that soup was all they were going to eat for that day. Afterward we were challenged to not eat for the rest of the day so that we could experience their suffering. It made me reflect on the times when God may have wanted me to choose suffering but i didn't out of selfishness. My prayer is that i would seek God and choose the suffering that he has for me.
Mark 10:35-40 says.
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”“What do you want me to do for you?” he asked. They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.” “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”“We can,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”
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"Pleasant words are like honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones." Proverbs 16:24