Suffering

The following Bible passage really speaks to my heart:

So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin. You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God. You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols. 1 Peter 4:1-3 NLT

The Apostle Peter reminds us that just as Jesus had to endure pain to die for sin, we will need to endure pain in our lives to die to sin! I have to be honest … sometimes in my life I have just not been willing to “arm myself with the same attitude that Christ had.” And yet this Bible passage has called you and me to the willingness to suffer to say no to sin in our lives so that we can live the “holy life” that God has called us to live!!

For the most part, we all like for life to be easy. We want the good things of life, the blessings of God in our life and yet if we are really honest with ourselves, we want it to come easy. And yet rarely in life does anything worthwhile come easy. A quality education, a satisfying career, a well conditioned physically fit body, a happy marriage, a harmonious family with well adjusted children, a strong, growing church, a healthy spiritual life that includes a holy lifestyle all are of great worth, and yet rarely do we have people willing to endure suffering to realize those good, healthy objectives in life. How about you?