Not for Our Comfort

Hello there, welcome.

It's time for another word of encouragement from your friends at Our Daily Bread. Today's encouragement was written by Marvin Williams, and he's titled it, Not for Our Comfort. Dan was riding his motorcycle when a car swerved into his lane and pushed him into oncoming traffic. When he woke up two weeks later in the trauma center, he was a mess.

Worst of all, he suffered a spinal cord injury that left him a paraplegic. Dan prayed for healing, but it never came. Instead, he believes God has compassionately taught him that the purpose of this life is that we become conformed to the image of Christ.

Unfortunately, that doesn't happen when everything is unicorns and rainbows. It happens when life is tough, when we're forced to rely upon God through prayer just to make it through the day. The Apostle Paul explained two benefits of right standing with God, persevering and rejoicing in suffering.

These two benefits weren't a call to endure suffering with stoic fortitude or to find pleasure in pain. It was an invitation to unshakable confidence in God. Suffering plus Christ cultivates perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope. This all flows from a faith that the Father won't abandon us, but will walk with us through the fire and into the future. God meets us in our suffering and helps us grow in Him. Rather than viewing afflictions as His disfavor, may we look for ways He's using them to sharpen and build our character as we experience His love poured out into our hearts. Now I hope you'll find some encouragement direct from God's Word. This is today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading.

It's taken from Romans chapter 5 verses 1 through 11. Hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through Him? For if while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more having been reconciled shall we be saved through His life? Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for always being there for us in our suffering and reminding us that suffering is an opportunity for us to grow closer to you as we lean on you for comfort and for hope. And may we find hope and joy in you as you provide what we need to persevere in this life. And Jesus, it's in your name that we pray and we long to suffer well. Amen. Thanks for listening today. My name is Wes Ward, and today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.