Freedom in Surrender
My dear friend,
The Lord has a reason for allowing you to go through this. It may be preparation for something far greater and far harder in the future. These are definitely the last days and for Christians it’s going to get far worse. But understand this, that in the last days there will come perilous times.
For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.
Avoid such people.
~II Timothy 3:2-5
Friend, this is my favorite section regarding suffering :
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.
Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.
Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.
You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you.
~II Corinthians 1:2-12
Don’t give in and don’t give up! Prove to others that Christ lives in you and that your perseverance is not by human effort but by God.
Faithful to see that calls you who will also do it!
~I Thessalonians 5:24
Be strong my friend, act like a man, and all that you do let it be done in love! You are being trained by God not the military! The greatest freedom is found in total surrender to Him.
~Mark
