suffering
God Turns Suffering Into Good – Part 2
God Turns Suffering Into Good – Part 2
In Part 1 of this series on God Turns Suffering Into Good, we began to look at the spiritual goals and desires God has for His people. Primarily after salvation, God desires close fellowship with His children. Because of God’s great love and passion for His people, God desires close fellowship. And unity with His people. And at times God uses the difficulties and trials in our lives to draw us closer to Him.
God also wants you to grow spiritually and become more like Jesus. God wants you to become the very best person you can be. A person of honor and glory. And to be like Jesus is His goal for you. God will use the difficulties and suffering in your life to transform you and your heart. They are a key tool that God uses to accomplish His desires and goals for you.
God Turns Suffering Into Good
We will continue to look into God’s word to see how God uses suffering and turns it into good in your life.
God Turns Suffering Into Good – As Training In Righteousness
God wants to bring you into close fellowship with Him. He also wants you to be like Jesus. And God wants you to be completely one with Him. Which means that He wants your heart to be the same as His. And He wants you to have the same desires, interests, priorities, and passions as He has.
God Turns Suffering Into Good
These are some of the tools that God will use in your life to reach His desired goals for you.
1. God’s Word (A Love Letter From God)
One of God’s main tools that He uses to transform you to be closer to Him , one with Him, and more like Jesus is His word. If people paid closer attention to God and His word in their life, perhaps God would not need to use the other tools to accomplish His goals.
Too many Christians are not spending enough time in God’s word, prayer, and fellowship with God. There are many disastrous results from this, and from too many people not being fully committed and surrendered to God. Not paying enough attention to God and Hos word is spiritually disastrous for a Christian.
“All Scripture is God-breathed (inspired by God) and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (be fruitful for God and His kingdom). – 2 Timothy 3:16-17
“Oh, that you had heeded My commandments ! Then your peace would have been like a river, And your righteousness like the waves of the sea.” – Isaiah 48:18
” Oh that My people would listen to Me, That Israel would walk in My ways ! I would soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries.But he would have also fed them with the finest of the wheat. I will satisfy you with honey out of the rock.” – Psalm 81:13-16
God Turns Suffering Into Good
2. God’s Discipline – Punishment
Many of God’s people do not pay attention to their relationship and fellowship with God, and to God’s word. And many of God’s people do not passionately seek Him. If His people will not pay attention to God and His word, then God will resort to other ways and tools to get people’s attention.
God has throughout history used discipline and punishment when forced to in order to get people’s attention. And to bring His people to the point of repentance and transformation. This tool is not God’s first choice, but He will definitely resort to it if need be.
”The people of Israel and Judah have provoked me by all the evil they have done – they, their kings and officials, their priests and prophets, the men of Judah and the people of Jerusalem. They turned their backs to me and not their faces. Though I taught them again and again, they would not listen (to God’s Word) or respond to discipline.” – Jeremiah 32:32-42
(Israel was eventually conquered by the Babylonians as a result, but God eventually brought them back to Him)
God Turns Suffering Into Good
More About God’s Discipline & Punishment
“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline and do not lose heart when He rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes everyone He accepts as a son. Endure hardship as discipline: God is treating you as sons. … God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in His holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. – Hebrews 12:5-11
“You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD. Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. – Deuteronomy 8:2-5
The 40 years in the wilderness could have been avoided. If only God’s people had only paid more attention to God and His word. And if only they had trusted God’s promises about how He would give them the promised land and defeat all of their enemies. But they didn’t, and they rebelled against God. And it cost them dearly. This serves as a good example for us.
Part 3 of God Turns Suffering Into Good
In Part 3 we will finish looking at how God turns suffering into good. We will look at another of God’s tools that He uses to accomplishes His desires and goals for His children. And we will look at some Biblical examples of how God did this to mold and shape some people into Godly people and faithful servants.
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The Desires of God’s Heart – Part 2
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