Suffering with light affliction

This week was particularly hard on many of my friends. Some dealing with extreme health issues and loss. One is attending a funeral for a family member and another is dealing with the loss of yet another son. This time due to a heart attack that was completely unexpected as he was in good overall health and was only 48. At the funeral there were many tears shed including his father who had just seen him just two days before he died. The sudden loss will bring a long period of pain for many people in his family including his wife and 2 daughters that he left behind.

As I get older you do not hear as much about your friends and family success stories. The majority of the time it is health issues or deaths in the circle of people you know. Even those who are on our prayer list for church, the numbers seem to grow. There are those who have been suffering with conditions that have gradually reduced them to just a life of survival. Some afflictions are indications of where they are in the later years of their lives. In some cases the final conditions they have before their death.  

Trying to explain Christian beliefs to people can often be difficult, even to those who say they themselves are Christian. Sometimes those people will get the wrong idea about why they suffer and what it leads to in the bigger picture. Some believe that God is angry at them, or they are paying for their past sins. Oftentimes suffering is brought in to humble us in his sight and to bring us to a full awareness of who God and Jesus are and should be to us if we profess to belong to them. As Christians we submit ourselves to him as how the Apostle Paul called himself a “bond servant.” Scripture also says to the believer that you are supposed to present yourselves as a living sacrifice as our reasonable service. This means that as believers we have to accept what hardships come no matter what they are as part of our sacrifice. Not many people if any look forward to suffering but we know from God’s promises that whatever we suffer in Him it is not in vain and it leads to something far better in the end.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 Shows us that what we endure in this life in health trials and loss, no matter how hard, will be a “light affliction” in comparison to what lies ahead in the glory that will be revealed in us.

” Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

As in any race that is run we look forward to the reward in the end and though we will suffer in this world, the end result should keep us looking at the prize that waits for us in the end.

Your Brother in Christ,

Steve Koenig

Lakeshore Fellowship