"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, according to His vast mercy, regenerates us into a living expectation, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from among the dead, for the enjoyment of an allotment incorruptible and undefiled and unfading,"kept" in the heavens for you, who are garrisoned by the power of God, through faith, for salvation ready to be revealed in the last era, in which you are exulting; briefly at present, if it must be, being sorrowed by various trials, that the testing of your faith, much more precious than gold which is perishing, yet, being tested by fire, may be found for applause and glory and honor at the unveiling of Jesus Christ, Whom, not perceiving, you are loving; in Whom, not seeing at present, yet believing you are exulting with joy unspeakable and glorious, being requited with the consummation of your faith, the salvation of your souls." I Peter 1:3-9 concordant
Very often we Christians find ourselves in hardships as we face daily tests that try our inner character. Mature Christians are being refined by the things they suffer. Sufferings do in fact result in spiritual growth for mature brethren. Yet, like so many babes, the immature in Christ straightaway reject any kind of hardship, expecting God will not put them through anything disturbing, praying He will prevent it.
In fact, He is allowing you to go through suffering. He subjected all men to vanity, placed us in the obstacles of death. These problems face everyone. The miracle is that we Christians can go through fiery trials that refine our inner character that really do bless us with lasting spiritual qualities. Trials open opportunities for our character to be changed, transformed within. We are enabled to conquer every enemy with Christ Jesus without fear, hating what He hates, loving the refinements that grant us godly character which fully saves our soul.
Christians who believe God is saving us as we go through every circumstance of our life can do good and suffer for it. They can endure:
“For I am reckoning that the sufferings of the current era do not deserve the glory about to be revealed for us.” Romans 8 :18 concordant
We can endure ALL THINGS and conquer every problem through Christ who brings us the victory. Even though we are broken and defeated on the outside, inside we are kept reserved to an incorruptible allotment. Surely sons of God are disciplined! Trained horses are disciplined, needing to be broken and kept in a corral so the horse is ready for its owners’ use. Those broken horses learn obedience, forsaking their own will when they yield to man’s purposes.
We belong to Jesus Christ. Our spirit is disciplined when growing in grace to full 100 fold stature during this lifetime. We have not remained babes in Christ, insisting on maintaining our own ways. Having suffered the loss of all things, we now value being usable mouthpieces of the Lord. His words are appearing to bring in a new satisfying dispensation. Think about it!
Truly disciplined sons are specifically selected to partake of the sufferings of this present time. Through sufferings, we grow to form Christ within, to bear Christ within, to develop godly inner qualities through our daily trials and tribulations. Surely circumstances can bring suffering to the forefront of our life, but spiritual inworkings of God’s Word and refinement in understanding God’s Spirit work quickly to clothe our inner spiritual person. The Word and Spirit coming from Jesus is the plan we support, and in its purposes each of us are tested and tried. We are proven to be qualified if we receive our inheritance in the glorious family of God.
We do not have to suffer great things like martyrdom or twenty years in a rat-infested prison in order for God to reveal and accomplish His work within us. Oh, no! There are a vast variety of events in our everyday lives uniquely designed by God to test our inner character. It is in the secret places of our heart the Lord appears by spirit to put His mind in us.
Much is gained in doing our daily tasks in godliness, having the right inner attitudes, in forgiveness of others, in mercy conquering the darkness of others. Yes, God is then granting victory in our inner development of divine character. Each of us have a unique set of tests and trials to go through, exposing our weaknesses, followed by displaying a supply of godly character that our Father gives to our inner spiritual man.
My trials have not been harder than yours, just different. If we learn to be faithful in the small things in our daily life in our soul, our life can be distinctly joined to the purposes God has appointed for the faithful, so we are faithful even in the big things. God’s people are as distinct and individual as snowflakes that are similar but all different. He does lead each of His people in similar yet different paths and deals with them in similar yet different ways.
He is pouring every son into the same image, using different molds of the firstborn. He does not make copycat sons, as believers produced in religious assembly lines are copycats. He is uniquely transforming His followers, and that unique experience makes each of us unique. Not even two fingerprints are alike. God made us that way: we are different, yet similar.
It is amazing what God can do with two ears, two eyes, one nose, and one mouth to come up with so many unique designs. One is tall, another short, how different and yet—how alike! God makes you to be uniquely different while He is conforming you to the image and likeness of Christ Jesus. Every member of Christ’s body is uniquely qualified TO USE SUFFERING AS A TRANSFORMING WORK to allow the spirit of Christ to reign within our adverse, painful circumstances. He uses our unique situations to form a perfect abiding place for expressing His nature, His mind, and His glory, right from within our own spirit!
The scripture states that Jesus was:
“…led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil.” Matthew 4:1
It is abundantly evident, since Christ Jesus is the pattern son, the firstborn among many brethren, that all the brethren who follow Him would also be led by the Spirit into their own wilderness experience to be tested by the devil. The process by which all sons must qualify has already been demonstrated in the life of Jesus.
As He was LED OF THE SPIRIT into the wilderness to be tested by the devil, even so we are also LED OF THE SPIRIT into our own personal testing, suffering a similar wilderness journey, tested by what we allow until we give no place to the devil. No child of God is tested beyond his abilities to manifest the sonship God gives through Christ.
The devil has been active in the candlestick church in Smyrna:
“Behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried.” Revelation 3:10
SOME of you! Not ALL of you! Some of you are content to live in realms mixed with religious misconceptions of carnal minded men. Many refuse to suffer chastisement or to be dealt with as firstfruit sons! If once we learn how God chastises those He draws near to Himself, we begin to embrace the process and quickly become obedient to it, for it makes us POOR IN SPIRIT, waiting for Him to appear, among many other things.
We are tried and proven successful in the wilderness, allowing the devil no place within our own soul, no place within our thinking. Fear is cast off until no injustice works within us, until God validates our claim to sonship unto Him. Scripture is most explicit in this regard:
“Since, then, the little children have participated in blood and flesh, He also was very nigh by partaking of the same, that, through death, He should be discarding him who has the might of death, that is, the Adversary, and should be clearing those whoever, in fear of death, were through their entire life liable to slavery.” Hebrews 2:14-15 concordant
“But if ye be without chastisement (discipline), whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons…” Hebrews 12:8
Sons learn to bind all the lies and contradictions working within their being. They pull down every reasoning to see the way through these suffering situations. They are chastised properly in the things coming their way. We have the possibility of pleasing our Father in the small matters of life. To be faithful in small things determines what further judgment is needed for each of us. It can grant us greater expanse into partaking of the heavenly qualities of our Father.
He is sending images of sonship to be released within our inner spiritual person. Disciplined sons learn to embrace and examine every matter of life's hardships truthfully, as a testing that allows more of His righteousness to reign within our being. Even in the severe trials God will be supplying to us now, His mercy is unveiled within us. Like Paul we see our spirit is being renewed daily as these “light afflictions” we experience are working to establish a vision of a lasting order of His righteous glory, right within our spirit.
"Wherefore we are not despondent, but even if our outward man is decaying, nevertheless that within us is being renewed day by day. For the momentary lightness of our affliction is producing for us a transcendently transcendent eonian burden of glory, at our not noting what is being observed, but what is not being observed, for what is being observed is temporary, yet what is not being observed is eonian. For we are aware that, if our terrestrial tabernacle house should be demolished, we have a building of God, a house not made by hands, eonian, in the heavens." II Corinthians 4:16-5:1 concordant
Confirming this viewpoint, we have an inner house not made of natural effort. We are alive to the things of God within. We see our trials work out IF we are refined by them for our spiritual good. Peter’s writings translated by the Greek have the word “sumbaino” in a passage, translated “happened,” in this concordant version:
“Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing ‘happened’ unto you. But rejoice, inasmuch as you are partakers of Christ's suffering; that when his glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy.” I Peter 4:12-13
The thought is that trials do visit us, they "happen," and they may bother us for awhile, but we are not to think of them as strange or alien things. Instead we are to accept such experiences as a process where we are reduced to the divine will. Through such experiences, the insight of divine instruction is coming from our heavenly Father. Christ transforms the words of our mouth and the thoughts dwelling within our enabled spirit, so we see what Christ sees.
Within our enabled spirit, further strength has come to endure all things as His image is fully formed and grasped within! Peter explains that the reason we should not think of our trials as being strange or alien to us is that, by experiencing them, we can become partakers of the same type of sufferings as Jesus and learn of the Father also.
As the Greek text indicates, we are “partners” in Jesus Christ’s sufferings. HE WAS PERFECTED THROUGH THE THINGS HE SUFFERED! All God’s sons are being perfected now. Even their troubles turn into spiritual refinement so they may receive greater portions of Godly characteristics in their inner spiritual being.
It is possible for overcomers of the candlestick churches to find a way to commonly experience our heavenly Father’s call to perfection in Himself. Those called and chosen will be faithful, not allowing the sufferings of this present time of hardship to diminish what God is doing deep within us!
“Therefore I am enduring all because of those who are chosen, that they also may be happening upon the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with glory eonian. Faithful is the saying: ‘For if we died together, we shall be living together also; if we are enduring, we shall be reigning together also; if we are disowning, He also will be disowning us; if we are disbelieving, He is remaining faithful — He cannot disown’ Himself." II Timothy 2:10-13 concordant
Since trials and testing are so closely related to sonship, like Jesus, a perfect knowing should not consider our personal afflictions as strange. Instead, we should grow to conquer every test in our spiritual lives by the welcoming arrival of the beloved Instructor. Unexpected suffering in hardship grants us a chance to get better acquainted with the discipline in our Father’s character. We learn more of how to draw from Him in the precious valuable moments of need in our life. NOTHING IS SO BAD THAT IT SEPARATES US FROM HIM. We are learning well the lessons which teach us that we are not alone.
Think of the blessing Abraham derived from being host to the three strangers who visited him. It did not inconvenience him. Instead of resenting the fact of some new disruption that had come to him, he saw God walking, coming his way to do a work. Abraham treated them as beloved members of his family and became involved in their journey’s concerns, thereby bringing salvation to Lot from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
But many Christian people today have been taught to believe they should be continually BLESSED! They think they should not have to suffer. Many want comfortable teachings that tell them they should have the very best of everything, as seen in the financial and material world, blessed with blessings galore. Can you envision Paul in the Roman jail expressing those sentiments? Can you read that he, in any way, questioned his confinement by claiming He was a great man that had worked at preaching far and wide?
No, it is not possible to read Paul complaining about his suffering while doing good. NO WAY. He had been transformed through many years of suffering in walking with Christ. He had applied spiritual principles deep within to recognize the great insight and understanding that God was revealing. He knew that God is with us in the hardest sufferings we will face. NOTHING can separate us from the love of God.
What a blessing Paul had writing in jail, not because of any evil he had done. Some of his greatest writings were accomplished while wrongly jailed at Rome. God was with him in jail. God inspired his writing of new things in new ways of understanding God. Paul PRESSED THROUGH what suffering was laid up for him. He gained a lasting crown in the Kingdom of heaven. So we too can be crowned. We are gladly learning what His spirit is saying to us. It is transforming us while we go through the sufferings of life.
Paul understood when his time to depart this life was near. Our Father will also lead us to prepare for departing, suffering the loss of all things. Yet, we live as being raised from the dead. We are gaining inner triumph of His rule in our spiritual life. As our soul is saved, we gain access to the spiritual life of Jesus Christ. Yes, even the sufferings of this present life can work to refine our focus on things above, to be full partners in Christ’s sufferings and Christ’s reign. We are to have the CHARACTER of our Father’s name written within us, as being full grown and well-pleasing sons to our Father.
I think, in the midst of these deep insights of how God’s spirit works to enlighten our daily decisions, He comfortably abides to glorify His Son in us NO MATTER THE EARTHLY PRESSURE. We who respond to our testing and trials with faith in Christ know it is not a strange thing at all, but a process all sons go though, a recall that melts butter (our soft spots) and also bakes (fiery trials) our bricks.
People react differently to the same type of affliction. Some people are made better, and some people are made bitter. Those who are made bitter about their life’s problems do not yet have Christ’s reign within. Presently most of Christianity is not mature enough to be dealt with by our Father as a son or daughter.
Yet, love is patiently working its perfection out as a benefit to those members of God’s family who have been made better through suffering! By the spirit a process is working now in your life when you are receiving God’s instruction. This process is revealing the qualities of Jesus Christ that can work within us. He is “unveiled” within our spirit, so now we SEE Jesus and have gained great confidence in our Father.
"And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." Romans 8:17-18 KJV
“…being reviled, we bless, being persecuted, we suffer it:” I Corinthians 4:12 KJV
“For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.” II Corinthians 1:5 NAS
“Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation,” Hebrews 5:8-9 NAS