Consider It Joy

 Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.

James 1:2

What does it mean to have joy during trials?

My life has been full of suffering, and stress has been so bad lately that in two weeks I've lost about 10 lbs.  My health is declining.  I've had severe heart palpitations for nearly the past week.  I had to go to the ER a couple nights ago because of severe pain that they couldn't figure out what the cause of it was.  I spend many days having crying spells.  So how do I count it all as joy?  How do we count our suffering as joy?

You look at the lives of the saints, and many of them went through intense suffering, even tortured and killed for Christ.  You look at the life of St Paul and he went through severe suffering.  When he wrote the book of Philippians, he was in a filthy prison.  Yet he wrote:

Always be full of joy in the Lord, I say it again - rejoice!  Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do.  Remember, the Lord is coming soon.  Don't worry about anything; instead pray about everything.  Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done.  Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.  His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:4-7

My dear brother or sister, I don't know what you may be going through who's reading this.  I would never undermine whatever suffering you may be going through.  Yet, through suffering, we learn, we grow, and we become strengthened.  We can get through this!  With bleeding hearts and broken spirits, let's lift them up to the One who can repair them!  The enemy seeks to destroy us, but Christ came to give us life (John 10:10).  You want to really annoy the enemy who's trying to destroy you?  Count your suffering as joy.  Give praises to the Lord and Thanksgiving.  You don't have to ignore the suffering, no, that would be no good either.  Ignoring it as if it doesn't exist will further agitate it and let it build. Yet, focusing and wallowing in it will cause it to build as well.  So acknowledge it's there, but fix your eyes on Jesus.  I'm preaching to myself too.  It's much easier said than done, believe me, I know.

Today, right now, let's fix our eyes on Jesus, pray about things, and be thankful to Him.

Take Up Your Cross and Follow Me

 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me."

Matthew 16:24

I've been meditating on this verse today.  What does it mean?

We often want things our way or the highway.  We look at how things in our lives we think are supposed to be; and as soon as things don't seem to go our way we question God.  We ask Him, "It's supposed to go this way!  My life is supposed to go this way!  What the heck are you doing up there?!"  Our ways are not His ways though.  Things don't always go our way, nor should they; because the world would be much more chaotic than it already is - if not destroyed ultimately.  In those times it's time to swallow our pride and give up our ways and follow Jesus.  To lay down our desires, our hopes, our dreams, and what we think should be, and say, "God, I'm going to trust You in all this.  I'm giving it all up and I'm going to follow you!"  It won't be easy though.  Crosses are heavy and meant for execution.  They are meant to kill.  But to follow Christ and die for Him is a reward we cannot even imagine.

I will continue to nail my ways to the cross I bear, and will carry it until the day I fall asleep in this life and wake up into the next.  It's a daily thing to do for all of us.  We often want to take them off the cross and nurse them back to health, but we continually have to nail them to the cross.  While they are our crosses to bear, we are not meant to bear them alone.  Even Jesus had to have help carrying His cross up to Golgotha.  Helping is not doing though.  We have our crosses to bear, and we help others carry theirs, and others help us carry ours.  Ultimately however, we are to bear and carry our own crosses.  It's like recovery from addiction.  You cannot recover from any addiction alone.  I was at a Celebrate Recovery meeting this week and it was described as this:  your accountability partners are your teammates, and your sponsor is your coach.  You're all on the same team with the guidance of your sponsor.  I see it also like a race.  Your accountability partners run with you, offer you water when you're throat is parched, or help bind up your wounds when you're injured.  If they're a little ahead of you, they can warn you of upcoming obstacles for you to dodge or be prepared for.  Your accountability partners help cheer you on as well.  Your sponsor is your coach guiding you.  With both analogies, the sponsor and accountability partners all have a role, but they cannot do YOUR role.  If you're a quarterback, a linebacker or a kicker isn't going to do your role.  If you're running a race, someone else can't run it for you.  You have to do the work yourself, but others can help you and support you.  However, if you try to go through recovery from addiction by yourself, you're more likely to relapse (unless God miraculously takes that addiction from you, which does happen to some people).  I have been clean from addiction to pornography for nearly a decade.  I'm still working on self-harm and other struggles.  The self harm unfortunately seems to be more difficult at the moment.  I've started going to a couple different Celebrate Recovery meetings however and one of them may be starting a Step Study so I hope to get more involved in that again.

We have our crosses to bear, it is our job to nail our ways to them, and carry them.