Suffering

This past weekend my staff went on retreat. It was a good time to escape the realities of life and school to enjoy hanging out with a bunch of really cool guys. We ate like kings. We played tons of sports. We made manly jokes. We hot tub-ed. It was great. On Saturday morning, Nate prepared a devo for us complete with questions to answer. The topic of the devotional was suffering.

There are lots of different types of suffering. Hunger. Thirst. Religious persecution. These are large problems we see on the news all the time. This devo, however, focused on the little sufferings in our lives. These things, while not on as large a scale as the aforementioned struggles, are still important to us in our daily lives. These struggles are the little things God uses to break and then grow us.

It was weird to think of my life experiences like that. I often tend to think, "Well, it's (whatever is going on in my life at the moment that I'm having a hard time with) not as bad as the starving kids in Africa or my resident who doesn't know where the money for school is going to come from. Therefore, I should just man up and get over it." While it's true that I shouldn't mope, it's not a good thing to belittle our daily circumstances.

One of the biggest hardships in my life recently has been breaking up. I was super confused for a long time. I still am to some extent. It is getting much better though. One of the coolest parts about our sufferings is that God uses them to His glory. Oftentimes, we don't get to see His work being done. This does not make our situations any less important.

I've been fortunate to have seen what God has done with my suffering. He's used this to grow me closer to Him. He used the break up to get me hooked up with some wonderful men for our small group. He's allow me to add to my testimony to minister to others. He gave me a chance to interact with some of my residents in ways I never could have before. Instead of sympathizing, I can now empathize.

So yeah, it's tough. It's called suffering for a reason. However, God will use our daily sufferings for His glory if we'll just let Him. What hardships are going on in you right now? How is God using them? Have you given Him control?