The virtue of suffering
Dr. Roberto Miranda
(Audio: Spanish)
SUMMARY: In this sermon about emotional and spiritual health, the pastor discusses the importance of understanding that trials, tribulations, and suffering are a normal part of the Christian experience. He explains that the world is fallen and populated by dark forces, and that internal struggles like depression and anxiety can also be used by God to draw us closer to Him. The pastor emphasizes the need to face pain and suffering head-on, rather than resigning oneself to it fatalistically. He cites various biblical passages to support his message, and uses examples from his own life to illustrate his points. Ultimately, he argues that pain and suffering can serve as God's mortar, breaking down our pride and self-sufficiency and allowing the life of God within us to emerge and bear fruit.
Pain and trials directed by God are essential for our spiritual and emotional growth. They break down our pride, self-sufficiency, and vanity, and allow the life of God to sprout through us, making us more loving, humble, and deep. Christians need to rejoice spiritually in the midst of pain, knowing that something good will come out of it. We have to replace superficial meanings of words like peace and joy with deeper meanings that come from our relationship with God. When we go through sufferings permitted and directed by God, we enter into a mysterious and sublime intimacy with the experience of Jesus Christ, becoming co-partakers of His very essence. If we are reproached by the name of Christ, we are blessed because the glorious Spirit of God rests upon us. It is important to recognize the role of suffering in our path towards emotional and spiritual health. Pain and trials directed by God are His preferred instruments to heal us and create depth, wisdom, and power in us.
The writer of Hebrews encourages us to get rid of the weight and sin that besieges us in order to run the race of life with lightness. God uses tests and trials to break, purify, and polish us, making us more like Christ. Suffering is an essential part of the Christian life, and we must interpret all events of life as God's way of making us freer, healthier, and happier. We are in fellowship with a great cloud of witnesses and must bear fruit for God's glory, which requires pruning from things we don't like.
God prunes us in order to bear fruit, which may be uncomfortable and make us look ugly. We may go through trials and suffering, but we should submit to God's will and ask for wisdom and strength to understand His purpose. Our crucifixion can bring life and defeat the devil. We should not become bitter, but instead trust in God and His good purposes for our lives. We are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus and nothing can separate us from God's love.
Pain and trials directed by God are essential for our spiritual and emotional growth. They break down our pride, self-sufficiency, and vanity, and allow the life of God to sprout through us, making us more loving, humble, and deep. Christians need to rejoice spiritually in the midst of pain, knowing that something good will come out of it. We have to replace superficial meanings of words like peace and joy with deeper meanings that come from our relationship with God. When we go through sufferings permitted and directed by God, we enter into a mysterious and sublime intimacy with the experience of Jesus Christ, becoming co-partakers of His very essence. If we are reproached by the name of Christ, we are blessed because the glorious Spirit of God rests upon us. It is important to recognize the role of suffering in our path towards emotional and spiritual health. Pain and trials directed by God are His preferred instruments to heal us and create depth, wisdom, and power in us.
The writer of Hebrews encourages us to get rid of the weight and sin that besieges us in order to run the race of life with lightness. God uses tests and trials to break, purify, and polish us, making us more like Christ. Suffering is an essential part of the Christian life, and we must interpret all events of life as God's way of making us freer, healthier, and happier. We are in fellowship with a great cloud of witnesses and must bear fruit for God's glory, which requires pruning from things we don't like.
God prunes us in order to bear fruit, which may be uncomfortable and make us look ugly. We may go through trials and suffering, but we should submit to God's will and ask for wisdom and strength to understand His purpose. Our crucifixion can bring life and defeat the devil. We should not become bitter, but instead trust in God and His good purposes for our lives. We are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus and nothing can separate us from God's love.
Let me give you a little bit of background about what we're talking about here and that's about the trials, the tribulations, the suffering in life. Remember that all of this that we are saying today and last Sunday is in the context of a series that we are preaching about emotional and spiritual health, how to live healthy lives, right? how to be healthy people who reflect the joy of our salvation. Emotionally balanced people, people healed by the Spirit of God, people sanctified and cleansed of all those things that cause us to stumble in our lives and that sometimes make us a source of pain for others also because of those defects that we have in our own lives. Those things not dealt with by God often affect our marriages, affect our human relationships, affect our work life, and affect us within ourselves through internal suffering.
All those areas, all those things that go against the joy that God and the abundant life that God has declared over our lives. All these things such as: anxiety, sense of helplessness and loneliness, inferiority complexes, phobias and fears of all kinds, dissatisfaction in life, anger, resentment, an excessive sense of fragility or sensitivity towards criticism from others that can be good and positive, a mouth that sometimes does not bless others, mental ties of different kinds, things that contradict the holiness to which God has not called. The sufferings of life, the losses of life. All these things that often prevent us from being happy or making others happy too.
All those areas, all those things that go against the joy that God and the abundant life that God has declared over our lives. All these things such as: anxiety, sense of helplessness and loneliness, inferiority complexes, phobias and fears of all kinds, dissatisfaction in life, anger, resentment, an excessive sense of fragility or sensitivity towards criticism from others that can be good and positive, a mouth that sometimes does not bless others, mental ties of different kinds, things that contradict the holiness to which God has not called. The sufferings of life, the losses of life. All these things that often prevent us from being happy or making others happy too.
