7546	Forums / Theology Forum / Perseverence	on: April 18, 2007, 11:12:32 PM
People experience great pain in life. It can be a result of some horrific circumstances. And sometimes the pain is hidden inside a person so that they can keep it hidden and appear unburdened by it. The christian is always susceptible to the circumstances that keep them weak and needy. The reason is that we have all of these desires that are deep within our souls. And these desires are different some times from the experiences that we have with pain and sin. These are the desires that our Father has His eye on. It is only when we experience the pain that we become aware of just what kind of new life we possess by our going to our Father knowing that we are much weaker than what we desire life to be in a peaceful and happy state. When we are going through trials, we have a different view of our deepest desires. When the circumstances of life weigh us down, our longings for relief increase. And these longings are the experience we go through as sorrow and pain in God. When we get these longings for relief we are drawn to the only relief in Him as our object. In this experience we become more sanctified. The truth is we have sorrows and joys mixed together. But our pain increases the longings after God. When we learn to long for Him in our pain we begin to suffer the sufferings of Christ. We learn to be humble and merciful as our longings increase for relief. In this way God begins to form a hatred for sin and a very profound love for His ability to uphold us through the pain and sorrow. In experiencing pain we sometimes are mis represented by others. People look on the outward but God looks on the heart. We are not focusing on our outward behavior to get us through the pain, but we are going to God for relief even from being misrepresented. Our Father has designed it so that we are to worship Him alone, and not to draw people to ourselves through self righteousness. When we think highly of our selves and we are self sufficient our society of people are only there for the money and the good times, but God makes us needy so that we will not be tempted to trust in our own horses. It is because we are longing for relief that we are the choicest of His children that will be rewarded in heaven one day. In experiencing His eternal care for us , drawing out these longings we are more aware of our weakness and His strength so that we are growing to love heaven and to be with Him. When He becomes bigger than life, when His love in a deep painful way deepens our desires to know Him, then we will only want HIm more than any other things on this earth.