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"When God Brings Us Face To Face With Our 'Self'..."

Have you ever wanted to achieve or accomplish a certain goal or task, knowing that taking that 'short cut' or that 'easy way' would not give you a sense of conquest or achievement? Sure, you want to reach that goal, but you desire to do it by testing and deepening your character, discipline, and resolve. God does that very thing with us.

God could create scientists, mathematicians, athletes, and musicians from nothing, but, He doesn’t. He creates children who take on those roles over a long process. God doesn’t make us fully Christlike the moment we’re born again. He conforms us to the image of Christ gradually.

"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." (2 Corinthians 3:18)

In our spiritual lives, as in our professional lives, and in sports and hobbies, we improve and excel by handling failure and learning from it. Only in cultivating discipline, endurance, and patience do we find satisfaction and reward. Those qualities are most developed through some form of suffering.

Instead of blaming others for our suffering, we should look for what God can accomplish through it:

"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28)

Why do God’s children undergo pressures, suffering, and deadly peril? Paul answers that question quite clearly:

“But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:" (2 Corinthians 1:9)

I heard this part of a powerful testimony that deeply touched my spirit:
"I learned that God wasn’t going to go down my checklist of happiness and fulfill it. I learned what it meant to surrender to His will. Before, I wanted certain gifts from Him; now all I want is Him."

For turning us toward God, sometimes nothing works like suffering:
"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
CS Lewis
God uses suffering to bring us face to face, and, then to the end of ourselves and back to Christ — and that’s worth any cost. This is not theory. It is life. And we are to sense not only God’s presence, but also His purposes.

In order for us to be transformed continually into Christ’s likeness, we need God’s correction:
"For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." (Hebrews 12:10-11)

God never punishes us to make us atone for our sins. He calls on us to accept, not repeat, Christ’s atonement:
"But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5)
But He does give us a clear reason for disciplining us: “that we may share His holiness.”

Suffering also exposes idols and all other short-comings in our lives. It uncovers our trust in God-substitutes and in ourselves, and declares our need to transfer our trust to the only One who can bear its weight.

"The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.
The rich man's wealth is his strong city, and as an high wall in his own conceit." (Proverbs 18:10-11)
God uses any means necessary to tear down whatever we hide behind. Our job, reputation, accomplishments, or material possessions may be our fortified city or our imaginary high wall. But anything less than God himself will come up short:
"For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." (Jeremiah 2:13)

We sometimes imagine God as our genie who comes to do our bidding. Suffering wakes us up to the fact that we serve Him, not He us. Diseases, accidents, and natural disasters remind us of our extreme vulnerability; life is not in our control, contrary to popular belief.

We must relinquish our idol of control that causes us to believe we can prevent all bad things from happening, or correct their byproducts. God reminds us:
"The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein." (Psalm 24:1)
We don't belong to ourselves:
"What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

We should repeatedly tell our Lord, “This house is Yours. This money, this body, and these children belong to You. You own the title deed; You own the rights; You have the power of life and death.” It becomes much easier to trust God when we understand that whatever He takes away belonged to Him in the first place:
"The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." (Job 1:21)

We come into this world needy and leave it the same way. Without suffering, we quickly forget our neediness. If suffering seems too high a price for faith, it’s because we underestimate faith’s value.

"My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." (James 1:2-4)

How can we possibly obey this command to welcome difficulties instead of resenting them? By trusting that God tells the truth when He says these things make us more like Jesus, increase our endurance, expand our ministry, and prepare us for eternal joy.

Perseverance through suffering, for Christ’s glory, is the sure pathway to godliness. May the God of grace and kindness grant us His peace, and immerse us in His presence, as we walk that road — and may He remind us that He walked the road before us and walks it with us even now.