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On The Upper Room Discourse Re-Release For Lent 2024

THIS I KNOW – SUFFERING PREPARES ME FOR SOMETHING ETERNAL

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18

I quarreled with God. I was silently angry with Him. Nothing made sense of watching my young wife die from cancer. All of those seminary and sermon notes on suffering no longer worked for me while watching the mother of our two young sons go in and out of a coma. “Why?” “What was God up to?” “What possible purpose could God have?”

Then late one night while aimlessly paging through my Bible, I happened upon today’s scripture. I was struck by the apostle Paul’s words about our affliction “preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.” I began to see some sense in what was happening through the months of chemotherapy, nausea, radiation, biopsies, and fears: God was preparing Melodee and me for something eternal. God was preparing both of us for what Paul calls “an eternal weight of glory.” But Paul calls it more than just an eternal weight of glory; it is a glory “beyond all measure”, a glory beyond comprehension!  

Paul uses the imagery of an ancient set of scales: on the one scale, he places our suffering while on the other he places the eternal glory.  Paul weighs the two and sees that our coming glory will be “beyond all measure.” Add up all of our suffering here and it will be “small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us.” (The MessageTranslation)  

Now when I sit alongside those who are suffering, questioning and struggling, I see a “GOD AT WORK” sign over them. I know that God is preparing His children for something eternal! Weighed on the balance scales, our suffering here cannot be compared to the glory coming our way.

PLANT A THOUGHT… Repeat, Tell, Write, Create

A Fellow Traveler,
Tim

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