INTERPRET EVERY AFFLICTION

from Mike Riccardi: 

To interpret every affliction in your life as God’s disapproval is misguided. It is to side with Job’s friends and to forget God’s redemptive purposes in suffering.

But to interpret every affliction in your life as persecution for what just _must_ be faithfulness is also misguided. It is to steel yourself against the blessing of God’s chastening.

To be sure, if you belong to Christ, God is using your present affliction—whatever it is—for your good, and so there is no reason for the believer to be despondent.

But the good that God is accomplishing may very well be to bring you to repentance for sin or foolishness. In that case, there is no reason to be cocksure, fancy yourself a martyr, or deceive yourself that the only reason you could be suffering is for righteousness’ sake.

Wisdom and maturity are able to rightly discern whether a particular trial is your sharing in the sufferings of Christ, or whether you’re suffering as an evildoer (1 Pet 4:14-16).

“All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Heb 12:11).

“A man who hardens his neck after much reproof will suddenly be broken beyond remedy” (Prov 29:1).