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Rejoice, inasmuch
as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings.
1 Peter 4:13
If you are going to be used by
God, He will take you through a multitude of experiences that are not meant
for you at all; they are meant to make you useful in His hands, and to
enable you to understand what transpires in other souls so that you will
never be surprised at what you come across. "Oh, I can’t deal with that
person." Why not? God gave you ample opportunity to soak before Him on
that line, and you "barged off" because it seemed stupid to spend
time in that way.
The sufferings of Christ are
not those of ordinary men. He suffered "according
to the will of God," not from the point of view we suffer from as
individuals. It is only when we are related to Jesus Christ that we can
understand what God is after in His dealings with us. It is part of
Christian culture to know what God’s aim is. In the history of the Christian
Church the tendency has been to evade being identified with the sufferings
of Jesus Christ; men have sought to procure the carrying out of God’s order
by a short cut of their own. God’s way is always the way of suffering, the
way of the "long, long trail."
Are we partakers of Christ’s sufferings? Are
we prepared for God to stamp our personal ambitions right out? Are we
prepared for God to destroy by transfiguration our individual
determinations? It will not mean that we know exactly why God is taking us
that way; that would make us spiritual prigs. We never realize at the time
what God is putting us through; we go through it more or less
misunderstandingly; then we come to a luminous place and say—"Why, God
has girded me, though I did not know it!’
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