7 Benefits Of Going Through Hard Times

Everything God does in our lives is for our benefit, including suffering. 

 Though they never seem pleasant at the time, hard times produce wonderful benefits in our lives. On Monday I mentioned one benefit – affliction drives us to God’s word. Here are seven more benefits of suffering:

Affliction drives us to God in prayer

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. James 5:13
Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. PS 107:6

When the sun’s shining and everything’s going our way, we don’t feel our need for God. But desperate times lead to desperate prayer. When we’re helpless to change our situation, we cry out to our Savior, who delivers us from our distress.

Affliction humbles us

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. 2 CO 12:7    Continue at Mark Altrogge

You Can Take Heart in Uncertainty

Uncertainty is a difficult thing to bear. We want to know where the provision is going to come from or if we’re going to die of this disease or how this child is going to turn out or if our job will still be there next month.

But as we see in Luke 9:57–58, Jesus makes it clear that his disciples must be able to bear uncertainty if they are to follow him.

“I will follow you wherever you go.”

I’m sure that whoever made this public declaration to Jesus was sincere. They likely had heard him preach and seen him perform amazing signs and wonders. 

As Jesus’s fame increased, so did the number of his would-be disciples.

What the person might not have known was that at that moment Jesus was homeless. Jesus and his cohort were traveling south from Galilee. He had set his face to go to Jerusalem, where his resolute purpose was to die. But to get there he had to travel through Samaria.

Getting the Context

Back then there was a lot of bad blood between Jews and Samaritans. More precisely, Samaritans had the bad blood. They were the result of centuries of intermarriage and religious syncretism between Jews and Israel’s former Gentile conquerors.   Continue at Jon Bloom

The Life of an Ordinary Pastor

Probably 95% of solid Christian pastors labor almost in an unnoticed way – visiting the sick, weeping in prayer at night, preparing sermons (with which they are never happy!), struggling with illness and personal shortcomings, preaching to 50 or 75 people on Sunday, baptizing, leading wedding services, and crying at the gravesite with other Christians.  So Don Carson’s book about his father’s life is exactly realistic: Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: the Life and Reflections of Tom Carson.

This book is not exciting.  Rev. Tom Carson’s life was pretty normal – though perhaps a little more difficult than average because he labored in such hard soil (the Quebec area in the ’40s and beyond).  He is not very quotable, and his journals aren’t full of moving and inspiring writing.  Rev. Carson even suffered through periods of melancholy because he didn’t have a high view of himself; he sometimes questioned his abilities and calling.  So if you want a book about self-motivation, conquering the world for Christ, starting a thriving ministry, or building a multi-campus church, don’t get this book.  You’ll be sorely disappointed.     Keep Reading...