A Devotional I wrote for the release of Burning Sky

Thou hast enlarged me
when I was in distress.
Psalm 4:1 KJV
There are many promises for the believer given by God in the
scriptures, but there’s one promise we’re often hesitant to claim, or even
acknowledge as part and parcel of our fellowship with Jesus Christ. It’s the
promise of suffering.
Which of us, left to ourselves, would choose suffering over
joy? And yet when suffering comes, haven’t we experienced God’s grace in its
midst?
For there is also a promise in suffering. The loss of a dream, a loved one, a job, good health
or independence, all these temporal experiences for the believer bring about eternal
gain—in a realization of the need for Christ’s sustaining strength, for His
peace that is deeper than our understanding, and for the sweetness of intimacy
in our trust in and fellowship with Him, tested through the fires of
disappointment, setback, or grief.
by Becky, Flickr Commons

Loss and suffering also bring gain in the form of
soul-stretching. It’s in the constricting of our outward lives—through
distress, as the psalmist declares—that inwardly our souls are enlarged. Not only
enlarged with greater trust and faith in our Heavenly Father, but also with
compassion for, and patience and kinship with, the sorrow and loss of those to
whom God divinely links us on our journey through life. For… Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ… who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to
comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves
are comforted of God.
2 Corinthians 3-4 KJV

Through that work of enlarging—and comforting—we’re prepared
for the greater works and blessings God has in store for us, either in this
life or eternally. Those blessings may look different than what we once
dreamed, but in the end they will bring a greater fulfillment than anything we
might have imagined for ourselves from our smaller and more self-absorbed
perspective.

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