Suffering: Polishing God's Monuments

This is just a short follow up to my last posting- A New Year's Blessing. It is a further confirmation from a published author that this is how God often works.

"Shaping up requires chipping away. The whole idea of the Christian life is for us to be conformed to Christ, not to be comfortable in Christ. Sometimes we just don't get it. The truth is, a life of suffering is a better benchmark of God's favor than a life of surfing. God's love is more likely to reveal itself in the presence of pain than in the absence of it."
(Jim Andrews in Polishing God's Monuments, p. 248)

This comes from someone who knows the pain of serious longterm illness in his family. It is worth reading if you want to gain a biblical view of suffering in a very real setting. I especially recommend it to anyone who is suffering or has family or friends going through suffering.

Here's a link to a much more indepth review of the book by Tim Challies.

Grace and peace,

Dave

A New Year's Blessing

I heard Brennan Manning speak (The Ragamuffin Gospel) a few years back. What grabbed me more than anything were these words of "blessing" with which he ended the session.

May all your expectations be frustrated,

May all your plans be thwarted,

May all your desires be withered into nothingness,

That you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child;

And learn to seek, and depend on and rest wholly in the God who is Father, Son, and Spirit.

As much as I dread wanting that first part or wishing it on you, I suspect that's what it really takes to depend wholly on God.

We really have no idea what is coming our way in this new year. Let's be thankful when God graces us with fulfilled expectations and plans, but can we be even more thankful when His blessings match the description above? Can we remember to see this as God's way of drawing us closer to Himself?

Blessings,

Dave