“But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ JESUS, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you”.
1 Peter 5:10
God is very clear on His call upon our lives, it is a call unto eternal glory. The glory that transcends time and space, the glory that you will bask in, in time, but more importantly, beyond time. It is the kind of glory that knows no end, its life span is longer than our time here on earth and will continue even after we have gone to be with God in eternity. But preceding this eternal glory is what God calls “suffering for a while.”
For the believer, no suffering is permitted to last forever. It is unscriptural for any believer to suffer unendingly. It is a covenant illegality for a believer to be unsettled beyond a moment. God only permits us to suffer for a while. A while could mean a night, a season or a short period of time. But the Bible’s position on the suffering of the believer is very clear, it is to last for a while, not a lifetime. Have you not seen in your Bible that “…weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning?” Psalm 30:5.
Why would a good God allow His children to suffer for a while? The answer is found in our text today. The first reason is our perfection. While you may be concerned about how things will fall into place, how you will buy the next car, build the next house, get the next promotion…etc, God is concerned about your perfection. HE wants you mature, God wants you to become a better believer. HE wants you to move from spiritual childhood to sonship.
God took His people, the Israelites, out of the land of bondage into the wilderness but His ultimate plan for them was the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey but He had to take them through the wilderness where nothing was working, where they had to feed on manna, where they had plenty of gold but there was nothing to buy with it. God allowed this moment of suffering for a while, because HE wanted to perfect them, to prove what is in their heart, to teach them lessons they may not have learnt in any other way.
For the Israelites in that generation, their moment of suffering for a while was the wilderness experience they had. Saint, when you go through things, do not just go through them, find out from God what He is trying to teach and make out of you, seek to learn the lessons you need to learn because failure to learn the intended lessons may prolong that season of suffering. The children of Israel were slow at learning and ended up prolonging their days in the wilderness. The more God tried to teach them, the more they resisted, murmured, complained and looked back at Egypt. Learn every lesson and learn fast, there is glory waiting.
Understand that God is not taking you through those times and seasons of life for nothing. The essence of the suffering for a while is for your perfection. God is not looking at what you are looking at, He may allow you to suffer for a while, but His target is your perfection
1 YEAR BIBLE READING PLAN
OLD TESTAMENT: 2 CHRONICLES 33 – 34
NEW TESTAMENT: ACTS 23
