Suffering

Our church as has started a series on 1st and 2nd Peter which focuses mainly on suffering. I feel like this is a very appropriate topic since so much of the past few years have brought about suffering my life. As I think about suffering I am reminded of something that I recently read. Last Fall I did a Bible study with the DTS wives. We studied the Sermon on the Mount and at the beginning of our study was an excerpt from the book The Refelctive Life by Ken Gire. It read as this:
"But honestly I want to be like the Christ who turned water into wine not the Chrst who thirsted on a cross. I want to be the clothed Christ not the one whose garment was stripped and gambled away. I want to be the Christ who fed the five thousand not the one who hungered for forty days in the wilderness....This is the dark side of Christanity, the side we don't see when we sign up. That if we want to be like Christ, we have to embrace both sides of His life. What else could it mean when the Bible talks about "the fellowship of His suffering"? How could we enter that fellowship apart from suffering? How could we truely know the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief if we had not ourselves known grief and sorrow?"
I am thankful that I serve a God who does not waste my suffering....that through my suffering He brings me to a deeper understanding of His Son, Jesus Christ and that He uses my suffering for my santification...to make me more Christ like and to bring Himself glory!