Time with God - February 16, 2018
“But the Lord said to him, ‘Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.’”
God’s good plan for your life includes pain and difficult times!
David Wilkerson said, “Jesus didn’t save you so you could cruise to heaven in a luxury liner. He wants you to be useful in His kingdom! The moment you got saved, He enrolled you in His school—the school of suffering and affliction.”
That doesn’t mean God is the source of all hardship in your life. You may experience attacks from the forces of evil in this world, or people may hurt you with evil motives. But God’s supreme authority means that his good purpose overrules all of those evil motives. He’ll even use those terrible things done to you out of evil motives to produce spiritual growth in your life.
Pain enables you to grow and mature spiritually in ways that nothing else can accomplish.
Years later, Paul wrote, “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:3-5).
For the iPhone app and more from John North and Ambassadors For Christ International, click here.
