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The Key to Lasting Spiritual Growth (It's Not What You Think)
96 Plays2 years ago
We're diving into a topic that often gets overlooked in the church - suffering. Yep, you heard that right! We're going to explore the key to lasting spiritual growth through the lens of pain and challenges. You know, in our culture, there seems to be this belief that a prosperous and comfortable life is the ultimate goal. But let me tell you, that's not exactly the message we find in the Bible. In fact, when we look at the lives of great biblical figures like Joseph, David, and even Jesus himself, we see that suffering played a crucial role in their journey towards spiritual maturity.
So, buckle up, because Ridley and I are going to walk you through the stories, the lessons, and the perspectives that reveal the true purpose of suffering. We'll also discuss the misconceptions about it, the role it plays in our lives, and how to respond to it with joy and faith.
Timestamps:
00:02 Grove Hill Church podcast discusses joy in adversity.
05:38 Suffering is often divine discipline, not punishment.
09:35 Suffering has purpose, grows and completes faith.
11:11 Suffering challenges faith, shaking believers' expectations.
16:46 Importance of suffering: growth, faith, future opposition.
18:58 Bible teaches suffering is part of life.
21:52 Prepare for inevitable suffering in others' hearts.
27:06 Taming the tongue with horse analogy.
28:00 Lean into pain to grow and mature.
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Transcript
Joy and Adversity in Philippians
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome back to the Grove Hill Church podcast. I'm Dan Sanchez, and I'm joined by Pastor Ridley Barron for our sermon slice series. This Sunday, Ridley covered the Joy, or Joy and Adversity, I think was the title of the sermon today. And I was excited. I was coming out of the book of Philippians.
Why Discuss Suffering?
00:00:20
Speaker
And I was like oddly like just so happy that he was talking about it, which in the email when I sent him the message later on of like what I wanted to do the podcast on for the sermon slice, I'm like, is it weird? I asked him like, is it weird that I'm like excited to talk about suffering?
00:00:37
Speaker
They're like masochistic of me. James does tell us to count it all joy when we face trials of many kinds, so maybe you're a little excited about it. There you go. Just biblical. It's just biblical. We should all be excited about the topic of suffering. But I was excited about it because it's a topic that I don't think we talk about enough in church, and you can kind of tell why, because it's not a really fun topic.
Understanding Suffering's Impact
00:00:56
Speaker
It's not a pleasant topic.
00:00:57
Speaker
It's not a topic that wins the crowds like at a Joel Osteen Sunday morning, right? But I find that it's become a more important topic in my life because I find that my understanding of suffering impacts my life dramatically because as you've said before, Ridley, that if you're not suffering now, you probably will be at some time soon. It's probably just around the corner, so you better start thinking about it and preparing for it now.
00:01:25
Speaker
So I wanted to kick it off with just like a recap of what is a biblical view on suffering.
Defining Suffering vs. Inconveniences
00:01:34
Speaker
Wow. You know, I don't know that I've ever actually seen a really good definition that's put out there, but I think my best attempt at a definition would be any thing or person that presents itself as a hindrance to your growth and pursuit of following Jesus Christ.
00:01:50
Speaker
Um, and, and that kind of definition starts to eliminate things like, um, you know, my car won't crank in the morning cause it's cold or whatever. Cause that's not really true suffering. You and I were talking before we came online about our misperceptions regarding suffering and how we throw everything into the category of suffering and much of it's not really suffering. It's just inconveniences in life.
00:02:13
Speaker
No, I would say that like, even those inconveniences are still, they're like little testing grounds. Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. For some of us, it's just traffic. In fact, I've heard a lot of people at church say like, Oh, traffic gets me. And I'm like, that's a little inconvenience. If you're not ready for big suffering, like learning how to control your heart during traffic stops or people cutting you off or whatever, that's like little tests before getting to big tests even.
Sources of Suffering
00:02:40
Speaker
This is one of the areas I think where the English language may fail us a little bit in our conversations because we throw inconvenience, trials, tests, temptations, persecution, sufferings. We throw all those words into the same bowl together.
00:02:57
Speaker
And I think they describe different levels of opposition to our growth and different sources of those oppositions. You know, we talked about a little bit Sunday, some of the stuff that we face that we call suffering really just honestly comes because we make dumb choices in our lives. And so you can't equate those necessarily to persecution because persecution is an outside source that's applying pressure to you in a direct attempt to keep you from following Jesus Christ.
00:03:25
Speaker
Some of our suffering is very much born out of our own hearts because of things we choose to do to ourselves.
00:03:34
Speaker
though, do you think with the different levels of suffering, obviously some being very great and some being like inconsequential, all of them should receive a similar response. I mean, it's like hard because like, obviously, like your response to these things are going to be dramatically different if people would expect they'd be different on different ends. But your response as a Christian should still be to pursue joy. Yes.
00:04:03
Speaker
to acknowledge God is still your Lord and Savior and provider. He's still faithful while you're suffering.
Christian Response to Suffering
00:04:10
Speaker
So the response is still the same. So I would liken it to the response that a dad desires from his children when he gives commands to them, because you've got children, you'll understand this. But with my four children, I had to apply different kinds of
00:04:27
Speaker
correction and discipline to them in order to get them to respond to me. Sometimes it was just simply a word of encouragement. Hey, I need you to go do something for me and they would respond immediately. Other times there was the threat of something. I'm going to take your phone away or you're going to be grounded for a week.
00:04:45
Speaker
And then there was the times where I literally had to follow through and say, okay, you're grounded. You're, you're not going anywhere for a month. Sometimes I said for a lifetime, but then I had to back off. Um, but you know, in every one of those situations, the outcome is always desired is the same. I just want obedience from you. So I think God does the same thing. He allows the trials to come into our lives.
00:05:08
Speaker
And being a good, good father, he knows what level of suffering is a necessary to get our attention. Um, and I think that's why when you look at the book of James, it says counted all joy and you face sufferings of many kinds.
Misconceptions on Suffering
00:05:23
Speaker
There's no one right kind. There's no one special kind. There's, there's all kinds of sufferings and temptations and trials we face. So what would you consider are some of the common misconceptions about suffering in the church?
00:05:37
Speaker
Um, number one, most of the time, I think suffering people automatically assume that you've done something wrong. You know, it's that whole, uh, earn things, there's rewards and punishments. And while sometimes that's the case, sometimes suffering is because God is having to apply discipline to our lives. I would say more often than not, that it's not usually punishment as much as it is guiding discipline that God's trying to give to us. Um, you know, it,
00:06:05
Speaker
Any time that God tries to get our attention, He has at His beck and call various forms of things. It could be encouragement from a friend, but it also could be persecution from an enemy and everything in between, all available for Him to use for His purposes.
Story of Loss and Growth
00:06:23
Speaker
It's a good one. It reminds me of, uh, another friend who, who was a mountain climber and his sister, his younger sister would climb mountains with him. And I mean like, not just hiking. I mean like snow gear, pickaxes, like proper mountaineering stuff. Like they climbed Denali in Alaska was their biggest mountain, but they were doing a small layup, a little climb in Colorado. Avalanche happened. He's my friend survived and his sister did not. Oh, wow.
00:06:51
Speaker
He, he, you know, he'd survived the avalanche, bruised and messed up, but he got out of the way all the way down, came back to camp, couldn't find her, got all the way down to the hospital, came back and was in the hospital recovering. And he'd, hey, he hadn't found her. They were out with the search party. And he's like, God, if you don't show me what happened, like why this happened, I'm walking. This is it. And it's interesting. So he's, the Lord kind of spoke to him softly. He's like, what, what have I had you read in the Bible? My friend was like, Job, but I don't see how that applies.
00:07:21
Speaker
Hmm Wow, right and now that the whole thing has become a story Um in and of itself they actually made a documentary out of this whole story because it was moving because it ended up becoming Crazy. She had written a journal and had some of the craziest journal entries of just her love and devotion for the lord They published it and it it's you've probably even read some of it before somewhere sometime
00:07:45
Speaker
because of her, her journal writings have been spread throughout the internet and Facebook. That's incredible. What a powerful story. Wow. But his suffering became a point of like, it doesn't, it's not why. And I think that's where people go. It's like sometimes when
00:08:00
Speaker
You almost equate suffering, like his loss of his sister, it was his best friend at the time was his sister. Spent a lot of time and it's tense when they got snowed in on things. And he asked why, almost as if he had done something to deserve it. And a lot of times suffering isn't something you deserve. It's just something that happened. The rain falls on the righteous and the wicked.
Suffering from Others' Choices
00:08:26
Speaker
The avalanche happened.
00:08:28
Speaker
There wasn't necessarily a reason why it happened. And I think that's a good reminder that many times suffering isn't specifically targeting us. We're just catching the spray from where it happens, you know? We do live in a fallen world. And sometimes it's not our dumb choices that brings on our suffering, it's the dumb choices of others. Not to get too crazy with this application in our politically volatile world, but
00:08:55
Speaker
Everybody knows that government decisions have repercussions that we feel, you know, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat or an independent makes no difference. The people who are making those decisions are going to cause you to feel the choices they make, especially, uh, when those, those empowered choose to take corrupt paths. Uh, you can apply that in any number of directions. Um, you know, friendships that fall apart or relationships that fall apart.
00:09:20
Speaker
A man walks out on his wife and she goes through having to raise children all by herself. Well, it's not her dumb choice that did it. It was the man who calls that suffering. So. So suffering. What are some other misconceptions people have about suffering?
00:09:35
Speaker
You know, I think probably, again, we kind of go back to this idea that we have to be very careful what we lump into the suffering category. And I think because we aren't very in tune with God's Word, not as in tune as we should be, we don't realize that suffering more often than not comes with a purpose.
Purpose and Growth through Suffering
00:09:58
Speaker
There's an intention for it. I keep coming back to that passage in James because it's such a powerful and really an eye-opening passage where he says to count it joy, but he goes on to tell you why you are facing suffering. Why? Because you're going to face
00:10:13
Speaker
trials that bring endurance and endurance brings the kind of perfection, the completion of your faith that you want. So ultimately God's deepest desire for us has always been a relationship with Him and what He wants is to apply the pressure in the right places that causes us to grow in the areas we need to grow. But most of us when we come to our own personal suffering are quick to jump on other answers and not really see how God's doing it to us.
00:10:40
Speaker
I've noticed sometimes that some groups of Christians will have a conception that Christians shouldn't suffer.
Should Christians Suffer?
00:10:48
Speaker
Yeah. Especially around illness. They're like, no, like he's healed this all. Like by his stripes, he's healed. And there's my little thumbs up. Thumbs up. Yeah, there you go. I'm sure get it again. By our stripes, he's like, by his stripes, we're healed, you know, and they'll say things like this and be like, we're not supposed to be sick. And I'm like, well,
00:11:10
Speaker
It seems like we should expect some suffering. Yeah, yeah. And that's a great point too, because I do think that suffering that doesn't go according to our expectation rattles our faith probably more than anything else. And that's why so many believers feel like they have to pray prayers that leave God and out.
00:11:29
Speaker
You know that he can get out the back door without having to explain himself for why he didn't heal my sister of her cancer or heal my friend's marriage when I prayed for months for it, you know, because when when those answers don't come the way we expect them to then many of us do we just kind of sometimes we run from our faith others of us just kind of politely back away from it because we think it can't be considered true and faithful anymore.
00:11:58
Speaker
Recently have been reading just Paul's epistles and i've started noticing little tiny things that you usually just take for granted like Paul Wishing someone well because they're not feeling well or because someone got delayed because they were sick and i'm like
00:12:12
Speaker
Uh, it's not even with the apostle and the apostle Paul, like people aren't just healed all the time.
Selective Healing and Divine Plan
00:12:18
Speaker
It seems like healing actually happens a lot more as a, as a, as a witness or a gospel, uh, event. But it does say in James, like, you know, if someone's sick, you know, the, the elders, you know, should gather around them, lay hands in prayer. So it's not that we don't have healings. It's just like, it's just not always a guaranteed thing. Right.
00:12:34
Speaker
Well, if you think about the life of Jesus, I mean, here he is, the perfect healer, the Son of God. He walked around on this planet for three years as a rabbi that was followed and loved and respected, but he didn't heal everybody who came to him. We see the really cool stories where he did, and that sticks in our minds.
00:12:56
Speaker
I mean, there were still people who died around him. There were still people who stayed lame after he was gone. Um, so why did he, why was that the case? Well, because I think God again knows where to apply pressure and where not to, um, to get our attention. Yeah. Lazarus died eventually. He's not around today. He was not the firstborn of all the resurrected one. That was Jesus.
00:13:20
Speaker
Yeah. Um, you know, I was reminded this week, I had the opportunity to be at the meeting of the state convention of the Tennessee Baptist and heard some fantastic preaching this weekend.
Joseph's Journey through Suffering
00:13:31
Speaker
But one of the stories that got back to, uh, to the story of Joseph, we, you know, we've been there for seven weeks, but listen to him talk and preach about it. It was really cool. Cause he, he said this, he said, you know, when Joseph was sitting there in that prison facing the suffering brought on by a woman's false accusations of him,
00:13:48
Speaker
He said in that moment, as we're reading the story, all we can do is focus on the iron that was on his hands and feet.
00:13:55
Speaker
when we should have been looking at the iron that God was putting into his heart, that he was growing a heart that was going to be stout and strong enough to lead the nation of Egypt through the trouble it was going to go through. So he was working on Joseph's character and developing the kind of character that Joseph would need to be the second command to Pharaoh while you and I are more noticing of the prison cell and the chains that are on his arms.
00:14:20
Speaker
Yep. I mean, I could think of times in my own life where I should have probably leaned into it more and I was less prepared than I should have been for situations, maybe in work or whatever. And I can remember one time where I
Personal Experience with Suffering
00:14:32
Speaker
knew like I wanted to be married from a really young age. Yeah.
00:14:35
Speaker
And I knew in order for me to be married well and to have a thriving marriage, I probably need to have a certain amount of preparation in my heart. So while I was suffering because I was single and I'm like, yeah, but I want to be married. I mean, I'm like 19 feeling it and I'm like, yeah, but it's, I can understand why this isn't the time. But I use the time like, Lord, please use this time to make me the, like, make me godly or make me better, make me hungry, make me the kind of man that I need to be so that when I'm married,
00:15:01
Speaker
Like I will have a marriage that thrives. I can be the kind of man that my wife needs me to be. Um, but if you don't pay attention to lean into it that way, you can miss it. And there's been, there's been times in my life where, you know, I've gone through a period of suffering and I probably was put, not necessarily put in there, but God could have used it to prepare me for more or have more fruit afterwards. I think if we looked at it that way, like a lot of suffering would probably change. Like I'm going through suffering for a reason. I might as well make the most of it while it's happening right now.
00:15:31
Speaker
That's cool. Yeah. I think that's an amazing example, Dan, because I wish I'd had that intentionality when I was your age. Likewise, I wanted to get married. I wanted to have the kids and stuff. But instead of praying intentionally for the things that you prayed for, when God would put me through trials and struggles, I would whine. And so in my whining, I think my whining was so loud that I couldn't hear what God was trying to say to me.
00:15:57
Speaker
Um, and, and, you know, I hope I'm a better husband. I hope I'm a better man, a better father than I would have been otherwise. But I still look at that and realize that there's much more I could have understood if I had just shut up long enough to listen to what Jesus was trying to teach me.
00:16:12
Speaker
Well, that's a fun little story. I got plenty of whining in my past. Plenty. It's hard to remember when the heat's on and things are hard. It's really hard to remember that like, hey, one, this won't last forever, but two,
00:16:28
Speaker
Like this can count for something. Like God can use this. Poor unbelievers, when they suffer, they just get to suffer. That's all they got. When we, when Christians suffer, like not only can it refine us for like even a year from now, but like we're at least being refined for eternity, right?
Suffering and Spiritual Maturity
00:16:43
Speaker
So it's like a double, double win versus unbelievers. I think you and I were talking about this, that we hear a lot about suffering. We have been lately in our church just through the sermons that God has led us to as we go through the Bible, but
00:16:58
Speaker
I think there's two reasons why it's incredibly important. Number one, many of our believers are missing the opportunity to grow because they run from the suffering that brings that growth. You know, it's kind of like a piece of stone that runs from the chisel that can refine it into the shape it needs to be.
00:17:16
Speaker
And so I think as a pastor, one of the things I want to do is try to encourage believers not to desire suffering necessarily, because that can be kind of weird, but to not be afraid of it and to know that God is still with you in the midst of that suffering.
00:17:31
Speaker
I think the second reason that's incredibly important is because if we read the Scriptures clearly, we know that the suffering we face now is going to pale in comparison to what we will face eventually as the world turns even more towards opposition of God, opposition of the faith, and opposition of Christian believers. And so I think many in the church today
00:17:51
Speaker
who like to believe that they are followers of Jesus. I think they're going to scatter when the real persecutions begin. I mean, because we haven't even begun to experience the kind of, uh, persecution, suffering trials that places like believers in India, believers in Africa, some of those places experienced on a regular basis. And almost, I mean, that's like the title to the podcast right there is like the key to the key to spiritual maturity.
00:18:20
Speaker
And I think I'm just going to leave it out for the, it's suffering. That's the key to maturity. It is. It is. And let's be clear.
Biblical Instances of Suffering
00:18:28
Speaker
It's not just James that talks about it. I mean, Paul, Peter, they all, they all referenced it and talk about how that kind of stuff helps you to grow.
00:18:35
Speaker
I mean, you see it in the life of Joseph, the life of David, even the life of Jesus. It's just everywhere. Suffering is where Christianity almost comes alive. When Christianity struggles is when things get really easy in general. I think for me, that's part of the reason why I stand amazed at the number of people who fall prey to prosperity teaching.
00:18:58
Speaker
Because to me, if you read the Bible with your eyes open, you have to intentionally avoid the subject of suffering because it's on every other page. I mean, it's all the way through the book. It happens to men and women, to young and old.
00:19:13
Speaker
to those who've been devoted followers for a while, new believers. It's just all the way through there that the thread of suffering teaches us much about who we are and what God wants us to be. And so for us to fall, pray to somebody who says, come follow Jesus and your life will be perfect. That'll be fixed. You won't have any problems. I just, again, I think you have to be intentionally ignorant to not see all those things.
00:19:36
Speaker
I mean, or you're just not reading the Bible and you're cherry picking the little passages that you like. I mean, I've, I've, one of my major influences early in my life was a Miles Monroe, who is definitely a prosperity guy. And I loved it. I was into it and then I read it all and then slowly I was like, you know,
00:19:54
Speaker
No. I mean, he would say some crazy things like, you shouldn't even have a cross in your church because that makes the church a morgue. We need to focus on the kingdom and put a crown up because prosperity, you know? I was like, yeah. Now I'm like, no. You start reading Paul and he's like, we preach nothing but Christ crucified, you know?
00:20:14
Speaker
But let's be honest, I mean, in their defense, we live in a world that's negative, that's down, that's discouraging, it's frustrating. So anytime a little bit of light can shine in your life, we run into that, we gravitate to that. So it's easy to see how people fall prey to it. But again, I think if you do an honest searching of Scripture and if you keep your eyes open and your heart clear to hear from God, you're going to hear Him saying again and again and again, you've got to
00:20:41
Speaker
Lay down your life to take up the life I want for you.
00:20:46
Speaker
So like every podcast episode we've ever had, read your Bible. Read your Bible. It seems to be a thing we developed here, Dan. We just got to keep bringing it back to the main point, like read the Bible. Read the Bible. I know it seems tedious. I know it seems even boring to just sit there and it feels like you're reading the same thing every time. Keep reading it and keep asking God for insight to show you things that you haven't even noticed before, and he will. You keep going at it. You will learn things.
00:21:12
Speaker
You will hear things. You'll hear a sermon, then you'll dig deeper into it and you'll unlock new things and passages you've read multiple times before. Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, there's passages I have read since I was like first in vacation Bible school and old enough to read as a kid and I read them today and I go, Ooh, I never caught that the first time, you know.
Building Supportive Relationships
00:21:32
Speaker
So if somebody's, what do you do if somebody's not suffering, right? Cause some of us are suffering like right now and we're like, okay, this is good practical implication. But for some people like they have minor sufferings or things a little hard for them. What do you, what do you do knowing that like potentially in the future it could get really hard for Christians or anything we could be doing to prepare in the meantime? I think prepare is the right word. I, I don't know if I would even call it, um,
00:21:58
Speaker
Obvious and evident, but when I come across people like that, I find it just in my soul that I want to spend some time preparing their hearts because I know that time of suffering is going to come. You know, you're familiar with my story and what happened to me before all of those things unfolded in my life 19 years ago.
00:22:18
Speaker
Um, I really hadn't known a whole lot of suffering. I mean, I had watched my grandparents die, which as sad as that is, it's normal. They're old. You kind of expect those kinds of things. I had not seen a whole lot of tragedy in my life. I had pretty much as going through high school and even into college, most of everything I touched worked for me. Um,
00:22:39
Speaker
So I get, you can go years and not experience what we would really call true suffering. My life to that point had experienced inconveniences and minor bumps in the road. But when suffering really came on me, if I had been standing alone, I would not have been ready for it.
00:22:58
Speaker
It was the support and the encouragement of the brothers and sisters in Christ around me that helped me get through that season. So back to your question, what do you do when you see somebody that's not suffering? You prepare them for the suffering that will come.
00:23:13
Speaker
So strengthen relationships in the community now, because you're going to need that community at some point. And you can be that help to somebody in that community now. There's just people suffering probably around you now if you knew who they were. You know, the Bible says there's a friend that sticks closer than a brother. Well, the time to find the friend that sticks closer than a brother is before the suffering begins, not in the midst of the suffering.
00:23:36
Speaker
One way I think about preparing for suffering is like inflicting like a, a self-control. I don't know, but it's like, it's self-inflicted suffering, which is what I call fasting. Yeah. Because like fasting, uh, every time I do it, I'm like, man, this is the worst. It's amazing. You just don't eat for a couple of meals and all of a sudden, like all the worst stuff starts coming out of your heart. Right. And you're like, I am not as put together as I thought, cause I'm hangry and now I'm, I'm ready to,
00:24:03
Speaker
Yeah, like yell at my kid for over something definitely not my favorite spiritual discipline but and it's sad too because I you know, now that you bring it up I think fasting in some ways teaches us a little bit about suffering, you know, what is it? What does it mean to set aside your desires and
00:24:22
Speaker
postpone your preferences, those kinds of things in order to hear from God. And I think suffering brings those kinds of seasons into our life.
Pain as Part of God's Plan
00:24:31
Speaker
And you and I both know that fasting is not something that's practiced in most Christian churches on regular pattern these days.
00:24:38
Speaker
It's not, and it's been a while. I'm trying to remember the last of my fasts, it's been a few years. I'm like, it might be time, bring it back. Fasting and even tithing to some degree, I think it kind of hurts. And if it doesn't hurt, you're probably not giving enough.
00:24:58
Speaker
It's kind of like the New Testament, tithing principle, like give until it hurts a little bit. You should be giving sacrificially. And if it's not hurting a little bit, that's, you're missing the sacrifice part. We should put that on a poster, Dan, and you could just put it down the hallway at the church. If you're not hurting a little bit, then you're probably not giving enough. Yeah. I mean, it is, it's all about lessons that God wants us to see. And, you know, let's go all the way back to the very beginning of the word. The word begins by telling us, Hey, this God created all of this with a plan.
00:25:28
Speaker
And he's always had a plan. He always will have a plan. Nothing just haphazard about our existence. So when you experience suffering, there's a plan. When you experience joy and celebration, there's a plan. When you are challenged in your tithing and your giving, it's because he has a plan. And, um, I think for any believer, one of the things that we probably should be challenged in ourselves to do on a regular basis is to stop, examine the season of life you're in and go, okay, so how does this fit into the plan?
00:25:59
Speaker
You know And the last thing i'd like to talk about before we wrap this up is around an idea and idea I got I got from a friend talking about suffering um And thinking about pain pain is a gift And it seems like a weird thing to say but if you go back to genesis back when the curse curses were inflicted you don't you realize like pain I mean there's the pain pain of childbirth certainly there but like
00:26:25
Speaker
for just normal day-to-day things that happen. Like the ground is cursed, but we're not cursed. Work is a good thing that the Lord made. And I almost feel like work itself and pain itself isn't the curse. We're not punished, right? I almost felt like God put those things there in order to help us stay close to Him. Not as, here, I'm just mad at you, so I'm gonna punish you, bah, pain. I almost felt like, no, you don't understand, if He hadn't done that,
00:26:55
Speaker
We wouldn't need him. He's like, I'm going to put this here for your good. And that it was a thing that he put there for, because he loved us more than because he wanted to, because he was mad at us. Well, again, later in the book of James, I think it's chapter three where, uh, James, who is the half brother of Jesus is talking about controlling your tongue. But he uses this example that I think actually kind of connects what you're talking about. He talks about, you know, you get a thousand pound horse.
00:27:22
Speaker
He's a huge animal. He has such power. I mean, he's literally a hundred percent muscle and bone, but you put a small bit in his mouth and has the ability to turn that animal wherever you want it to go. Um, God, God puts things and circumstances in our life, people in our lives to turn us in directions to point us in the right direction many times. And, um, those circumstances we can choose to, we can choose to follow the bit.
00:27:49
Speaker
And we're going to have a great little journey together or we can fight against that. And you know, you can ask people who know better than I do about horses when they fight the bit. That's not a good thing. So the thing I try to lean into more and more is that pain isn't something to be
Embracing Suffering for Growth
00:28:04
Speaker
avoided. I try to lean into it when it comes or I try to remind myself to lean into it because it's so hard. Um, it's so hard to lean into it, but the more I lean into it and be like, God, make the most out of this, please like use this in me.
00:28:18
Speaker
then the more I grow if I try to avoid it, it only usually gets worse. So I feel like if more people like had a proper understanding of pain and suffering and leaned into it more, like there would be much more maturity in the body, which is why I was excited for the episode today. So I'm like, the more people can understand suffering and put it in this context, the more we
00:28:44
Speaker
Become like Christ the more we actually grow as believers Yeah, and I to me and and I can't take credit for this this quote I can't honestly tell you where it came from but it was something I found in my notes in my study I said this on Sunday if we're going to be more like Christ then it's necessary that God put us through the same things that Christ went through and
00:29:08
Speaker
Christ experienced suffering.
Christ-like Suffering and Hardships
00:29:10
Speaker
Christ experienced rebellion against him. People turning their back on him. He experienced loneliness. He experienced fear. He experienced all those things that we experience. The difference is we don't have to bear our cross because he buried it before us.
Reflecting on Suffering's Role
00:29:26
Speaker
So I think we can close out this week on that thought. Thanks again for listening to the Grove Hill podcast where we're trying to impact the life of every person with the whole gospel by any means possible, including this show. Thanks for listening.