All tagged suffer

A Case of the “I Wants”

Richard Forbes
Christian , Daily Devotional , Great in Faith

Do we want to be great men and women of faith? Is our goal to be like Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, or Martin Luther King? Is working quietly in the trenches unappealing to us? Did the first sentence of our morning prayers today contain the words "give me", "make me", or "let me?" God has no desire to make you great unless it just so happens that by doing so it will fulfil His will. As a matter of fact, some of the great disappointments in the Bible have been great people (like Nebuchadnezzar and Delilah) but men like David became great despite themselves because God needed them for that purpose or example. Often (also like David) they were great in spite of themselves. So, do we really want to seek greatness for ourselves?

Does God Cause us to Suffer?

Richard Forbes
Christian , Daily Devotional , Does God Cause us to Suffer

When we first witness to someone who has never heard the good news of Christ, or when we are having a gospel conversation with a person who is struggling on the verge of believing, one of their most pressing questions they ask is “if there is a God, and He is good, then why do bad things happen to good people? Why was His Son made to suffer and die for us?” It seems we are alright with the notion of bad people suffering, or being punished, but yet we stumble when those we see as good are allowed to face hardship, pain, or tribulation. So how do we speak to them about the nature of life in the world, sin vs righteousness, and the fact that without sickness there can be no healing, unless there is suffering, we can’t know joy, or… without having come face to face with bad, or worse yet, evil, then we can never truly know what is good.