This story is from 2018. Yesterday, I visited an old friend of mine from a church I used to pastor. I recently discovered he is battling lung cancer along with many other complications. With everything he is struggling with he lit up the room with laughter and memories. As he sat in his wheelchair in his living room Jim told me an amazing story as he lay in a hospital bed several months back.
A priest of color was dressed in black with a small box giving some patients there last rites. He noticed Jim and said, “You’re not one of the patients I was supposed to see”. Jim began to share how Jesus Christ changed his life at an older age with salvation through God’s love. He told him of God’s Holy Spirit and the priest said he had heard of Azusa street and the revival in the early 1900s.
The priest began to cry and asked Jim to pray for him. As he laid his head on his chest and stomach Jim began to pray for the priest. Think about it, Jim whose body was weak and frail was now being used as a vessel for God. The priest who pours out daily acknowledged his own need of weakness being human, yet he was humble to ask for prayer. The priest left with tears of joy and his head held high.
It doesn’t matter what you may be facing in your life whether weak or bedridden, God becomes strong in our weaknesses. God wants us to be living vessels with using us as His hands extended.
Each time Paul said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10 NLT
Suffering and hardship can be difficult, painful, and even depressing, yet the Lord uses our trials and testing for his purpisecto make us more like Jesus. Why?
“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. [29] For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren”.
God has a purpose and a plan even in the midst of suffering. There are times God wants to build more character in us like humility, love, forgiveness, kindness, wisdom, etc. Yet, the battles are real.
Allow the Lord God to put you on the wheel because He is the Potter and we are the clay.
“So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. [4] But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him”. Jeremiah 18:3-4
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us”. Romans 8:18
May we allow God to whisper to us even in our pain and suffering, because He cares and wants the best for us.
Be strong in Christ Jesus by his grace today my friend.
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