If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a
number of experiences that are not meant for you personally at all. They
are designed to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to
understand what takes place in the lives of others. Because of this
process, you will never be surprised by what comes your way. You say,
“Oh, I can’t deal with that person.” Why can’t you? God gave you
sufficient opportunities to learn from Him about that problem; but you
turned away, not heeding the lesson, because it seemed foolish to spend
your time that way.
The sufferings of Christ were not those of ordinary people. He suffered “according to the will of God” (1 Peter 4:19),
having a different point of view of suffering from ours. It is only
through our relationship with Jesus Christ that we can understand what
God is after in His dealings with us. When it comes to suffering, it is
part of our Christian culture to want to know God’s purpose beforehand.
In the history of the Christian church, the tendency has been to avoid
being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ. People have sought
to carry out God’s orders through a shortcut of their own. God’s way is
always the way of suffering— the way of the “long road home.”
Are we partakers of Christ’s sufferings? Are we prepared for God to
stamp out our personal ambitions? Are we prepared for God to destroy our
individual decisions by supernaturally transforming them? It will mean
not knowing why God is taking us that way, because knowing would make us
spiritually proud. We never realize at the time what God is putting us
through— we go through it more or less without understanding. Then
suddenly we come to a place of enlightenment, and realize— “God has
strengthened me and I didn’t even know it!”
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