Skip to main content

What I learnt on Sunday

This last Sunday I had a tremendous opportunity to preach on one Sunday two sermons to two different churches on two separate passages which essentially relates to the same theme : suffering.  In one I dealt with the question 'How Do We Respond to Suffering?' (Psalm 44). In another I asked "How Does God Comfort Us in Suffering?'. (Nahum 1:12-13)

As it so often happens when I preach - I get a new clarity over an issue as I share it - a new 'revelation' so to speak that God wants me to grasp. Usually a truth that has skirted around my mind, but now gets new clarity. On Sunday two particular points really struck me.

1. The sharp difference between Christian and non-Christian suffering. The purpose of Christian suffering stands in sharp contrast to non-Christian suffering. The non-Christian suffering is an outworking of God's wrath on our world and man as told in the Genesis account and Romans. The Christian suffer in Christ and all our suffering is service to God's kingdom in all it's dimensions. This necessarily includes suffering that comes as discipline. This is a huge point!

2. The extent of Christ's suffering on the cross. The  cross not only paid for our sins but also for our suffering too. It says in Isaiah that Jesus bore our afflictions. He was crushed for our infirmities as well not just our sins. This point has never struck me as much before. I wish when I am going through trials I can be reminded by others that Jesus paid for that too! This changes everything - it really does mean that the suffering of this present age are nothing compared to the glory that is too come. It really does mean that our burdens have been lifted at Golgotha!  That is amazing!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Humility of Newton

Thou hast honoured me. Thou hast given me a tongue and a pen, many friends; (Thou] hast made me extensively known among thy people and I have reason to hope, useful to many by my preaching and writings... It is of thine own that I can serve thee. And if others speak well of me, I have no cause to speak or think well of myself. They see only my outward walk; to thee I appear as I am. In thy sight I am a poor, unworthy, unfaithful inconsistent creature. And I may well wonder that Thou hast not long ago taken thy word utterly out of my mouth and forbidden me to make mention of thy Name any more! JOHN NEWTON ( Source : Wise Counsel) Newton wrote these words addressed to God in his diary in 1789. In that year, Newton’s fame had grown significantly because of his publishing ‘ Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade’ and his appearance before Her Majesty’s Privy Council appointed to investigate the slave trade.  I find Newton’s words quite challenging. The words reveal a heart truly shaped by t
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

Incarnation and Modernity

[The Bible] resituate modernity's prejudices within a wider context from which they were originally wrenched, showing them to be reductive heresies of a more complex biblical reality. So whereas modernity privileges an unchanging a-historicity, in the incarnation God enters history at a particular moment to gather a people to be with him not in a Greck eternity of unchanging timelessness, but in a biblical eternity of never-ending and ever-renewed intimacy and relational richness. Whereas modernity subordinates the particular to the universal, the Bible perfectly marries the universal "image of the invisible God" together with a particular first-century Palestinian Jewish man. Whereas modernity seeks the abstract over the material and finds itself painfully akimbo between the twin idols of materialism and immaterialism, in the same gesture the incarnate Christ validates material reality and prevents his followers from ever worshipping it. Finally, whereas modernity secks
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

I am what I am by Gloria Gaynor

Beverly Knight closed the opening ceremony of the Paralympics with what has been dubbed the signature tune of the Paralympics. I had no idea Ms Knight is still in the singing business. And clearly going by the raving reviews she will continue to be around. One media source says her performance was so electric that "there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen as she sang the lyrics to the song and people even watching at home felt the passion in her words" . The song was Gloria Gaynor's I am what I am . Clearly not written by Gloria Gaynor but certainly musically owned and popularized by her. It opens triumphantly: I am what I am / I am my own special creation / So come take a look / Give me the hook or the ovation / It's my world that I want to have a little pride in / My world and it's not a place I have to hide in / Life's not worth a damn till you can say I am what I am The words “I am what I am” echo over ten times in the song. A bold declaration that she
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →