Trials and Pain<\/p>\n
The devil, things and people being what they are, it is necessary for God to use the hammer, the file and the furnace in His holy work of preparing a saint for true sainthood. It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.<\/p>\n
The Root of the Righteous, 157.
\n________________________________________<\/p>\n
Trials and Pain: Easter Without Good Friday<\/p>\n
For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to
\nbelieve in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.
\n–Philippians 1:29<\/p><\/blockquote>\n…God will crucify without pity those whom He desires to raise
\nwithout measure!…<\/p>\nGod wants to crucify us from head to foot-making our own powers
\nridiculous and useless–in the desire to raise us without measure
\nfor His glory and for our eternal good….<\/p>\nWillingness to suffer for Jesus’ sake–this is what we have lost
\nfrom the Christian church. We want our Easter to come without the
\nnecessity of a Good Friday. We forget that before the Redeemer
\ncould rise and sing among His brethren He must first bow His head
\nand suffer among His brethren!<\/p>\nWe forget so easily that in the spiritual life there must be the
\ndarkness of the night before there can be the radiance of the
\ndawn. Before the life of resurrection can be known, there must be
\nthe death that ends the dominion of self. It is a serious but a
\nblessed decision, this willingness to say, “I will follow Him no
\nmatter what the cost. I will take the cross no matter how it
\ncomes!” I Talk Back to the Devil, 96-99.<\/p>\n“Lord, this morning I come before You on my knees to say, ‘I will
\nfollow Him no matter what the cost. I will take the cross no
\nmatter how it comes!’ Amen.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trials and Pain The devil, things and people being what they are, it is necessary for God to use the hammer, the file and the furnace in His holy work of preparing a saint for true sainthood. It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply. The Root…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"twitterCardType":"","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}