If you are going to be used by God, he will take you through a multitude of difficult experiences, asking you to participate in the sufferings of Christ. These experiences aren\u2019t meant to enrich you or benefit you personally. They\u2019re meant to make you useful in God\u2019s hands and to enable you to understand what occurs in other people\u2019s souls, so that you will never be surprised by what you encounter. If you don\u2019t go willingly through these experiences, you might often find yourself saying, \u201cI can\u2019t deal with that person.\u201d You should never feel this way about another soul. God has given you ample opportunity to come before him and soak up his wisdom about others.<\/p>\n
It might seem pointless to spend time soaking before God in this way; you have to get to the place where you are able to understand how he deals with us, and this is only done by being rightly related to Jesus Christ and participating in his sufferings. The sufferings of Christ aren\u2019t those of ordinary life. He suffered \u201caccording to God\u2019s will\u201d (1 Peter 4:19), not because his individual desires or pride were thwarted. It is part of Christian culture to know what God\u2019s will is, yet in the history of the church, the tendency has been to avoid being identified with Christ\u2019s sufferings. People have tried to carry out God\u2019s will using shortcuts. God\u2019s way is always the \u201clong, long trail,\u201d the way of suffering.<\/p>\n
Are you participating in Christ\u2019s sufferings? Are you prepared for God to entirely stamp out your personal ambitions and destroy your individual determination? It doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019ll know exactly why God is taking you a certain way. In the moment, it\u2019s never clear; you go through more or less blindly. Then, suddenly, you come to a luminous place and say, \u201cWhy, God was there all along, and I didn\u2019t know it!\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you are going to be used by God, he will take you through a multitude of difficult experiences, asking you to participate in the sufferings of Christ. These experiences aren\u2019t meant …<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":2356,"template":"","collection":[],"class_list":["post-2741","modern-classic","type-modern-classic","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/modern-classic\/2741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/modern-classic"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/modern-classic"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/modern-classic\/2741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=2741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}