Glorified By Our Sufferings

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Hi M____,
You ask:

I hope I do not disappoint you with the brevity of this answer, but the answer is as simple as you and me being glorified by sufferings of our own children when they obey the principles we instill in them, instead of simply following the crowd.

I have instructed my children in the ways of God, just as God has, through my father, instructed me. This ‘instruction’ has included many well-deserved spankings from my father, and I in turn found it necessary at times to spank my children.  It is completely politically incorrect to do so now, but it is very Biblical to spank a child on the buttocks. God’s language is the same. He speaks to us all through necessary and loving pain.

My children do not go along with the crowd simply to be accepted, and all of their friends know that they have principles by which they live. I have watched as my children experience their friends becoming very frustrated when they refused to take part in certain parties or activities, such as displays of patriotism and in the abominations we call Christmas, Easter, Halloween, etc.

While our circle of friends in our community certainly do not agree with our Biblical world view, I am still constantly complimented, and have been “glorified” by the way my children behave themselves and stand by their values and have not been seduced to abandon their principles.

We all admire a principled person who we know will act according to his principles. Even if we disagree with those principles, we admire and appreciate the sincerity of their character.

So it is with God. God is glorified because He loves us enough to chasten and scourge us when we are in need of such discipline:

Heb 12:5 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:
Heb 12: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
Heb 12:7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?

It is through the pain of His discipline that we come to love Him and His ways. There is no other way, and all who think otherwise will reap today’s fruits of the permissive doctrines of the infamous Dr. Spock, whose damnable books on child rearing sold so well for many years.

Since God is sovereign, all of the pains we experience in life, both physical and mental, are being worked by God according to “the counsel of His own will.” Those pains we bring on ourselves through obedience to God and being rejected by the masses for that obedience, amid those pains we bring on ourselves through our sins against God; All of our sufferings work to glorify God in us, and in time we will be glorified with Christ:

2Ti 2:12 If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny [him], he also will deny us:
Joh 11:1 Now a certain [man] was sick, [ named] Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha.
Joh 11:2 (It was [that] Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.)
Joh 11:3 Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.
Joh 11:4 When Jesus heard [that], he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.
Rom 8:17  And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint- heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with [him], that we may be also glorified together.

I hope this helps you to see how and why God is glorified by our suffering. Could God have done His work some other way? Well, He is God, so He is capable of creating perfection without discipline, but He has chosen this way of discipline to bring us all to perfection. His way is the only way because He alone possesses free will.

Eph 1:11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:

Your brother in Christ,
Mike

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