The Platform of Suffering

“Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” - 1 Peter 3:15

Did you know that suffering is the Christian’s greatest platform to exalt Christ? How would our lives change if we began to consider every struggle, trial, or unjust suffering a God-given opportunity to be His witness? What better way to shine light into darkness and tell the world that Jesus has made an eternal difference in your life?

When you choose not to lose heart, but to trust God; when you choose to respond with joy and love instead of bitterness and complaining; when you react completely differently than the world would to hard circumstances, you are going to get someone’s attention. “How do you do it? How do you keep your joy? Why aren’t you angry and bitter? Why don’t you fight back?” Every chance you get you must be ready to answer these questions. But they will never come if your life is no different than anyone else’s.

Count it a blessing when hardship gives you an opportunity to share your faith. Prosperity doesn’t give these opportunities to testify of God’s provision and sufficiency, but adversity does. Pleasure doesn’t offer this platform, but pain does. So many times, bad things happen to us because God wants to use those times to give us a platform to share Jesus with someone who otherwise might never listen.

Hope is a powerful thing. Our hope is not found here and now. The world puts its hope in money, power, success, medicine, and science. But there will never be enough knowledge or money to solve the world’s problems. But for the world, this is all there is. A Christian’s hope is in the risen Lord…not in what we hold in our hands, but in the God who holds us in His hands. In order to suffer well, we must have a conviction that because Christ has risen from the dead there is hope in every situation, victory in every defeat, and life even in death.

Dear Lord Jesus, I place my hope in you, I place my trust in you, and I place my faith in you because you alone are worthy. Amen.