pressing in

The stomach flu has visited our house off and on for four of the past eight weeks, and hit one child three times. This is not the 24-hour virus of my childhood, but one that lingers for days, even a week at a time. Our children have suffered from the most missed school days in one year, and this allergy season is one of the worst ever seen. Nursing sick children has become an almost daily occurance, and my counter and cupboards look more like part of a pharmacy than a kitchen. These are small but wearing afflictions that serve as reminders that we are not in control and live in a world that is not ideal.

Yet won't I seize each of these moments and days as an opportunity to press deeper into my Lord? I love these words of Spurgeon:

"Affliction frequently opens truths to us and opens us to the truth. Experience unlocks truths that were closed. Many passages of Scripture will never be made clear by the commentator, for these must be expounded by experience. Many a verse is written in a secret ink that must be held to the fire of adversity to make it visible. Affliction plows and opens our hearts, so that into our innermost nature the truth penetrates and soaks like rain into the plowed land."

We see God's love for us in this: we have a Savior who entered into our suffering world as a man and learned to triumph in the midst of it. Day by day throughout his 33 years on earth He learned obedience by living every single moment completely surrendered to the will and pleasure of His Heavenly Father (Heb. 5:7-9). The triumph of the cross was won in a few agonizing but short hours, but wasn't it the daily obedience of Christ to His Father that prepared Him for the victory of Redemption?

Sin has wrecked this world and left every person alive wounded in some way by affliction. It has left many souls searching for meaning and coming up short. But there is purpose in suffering for the people of God, and He has promised to work it all for good. Oh, that I may know Christ and the fellowship of sharing in His suffering. Let me turn to Christ--His example, His power, and His help--in every situation. What is the goal? There is divine power in suffering triumphantly with Christ that will draw men to Him. And we will know our Savior better, in ways we could not have known except by experiencing His own near and real presence while enduring affliction. There's nothing like hearing a child say, "Mom, because of this, I've learned to trust God and find His comfort even more." There's nothing like saying it myself.

Philippians 3:10-11 "that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead."