Raising the Sons of God through Suffering

Understanding Sonship Today’s Focus: Raising the Sons of God: Suffering Scripture: Luke 4:1-13; Philippians 4:6-9 Greetings Kingdom Citizens Now as weird as that may be as a topic is one that has been misunderstood and used incorrectly. When we look at suffering we see sad, gloom and adversity and to our soul that is what suffering is. But to God suffering is a growing tool and we will take a look at how God uses suffering to mature the sons of God. Let’s use the best example to describe how this works and we will use Jesus! Now in our past message we talked about the Holy Spirit being responsible for raising us and maturing us as sons of God. This was no different for Jesus. After being baptized at the Jordan, our scripture, Luke 4:1 states that Jesus was led by the Spirit (Holy Spirit) into the wilderness knowing that He would be tempted of the devil. Now Jesus was fasting during this time so it should come as no surprise what the first temptation was going to involve. It involved food because the scripture says Jesus hungered (Luke 4:3-4). Now fasting is a time period where we sacrifice our flesh to hear the Spirit. So the devil tried to make Jesus turn to His flesh and make His soul make a decision independent of what God the Father wanted Jesus to do. If Jesus had done this, this would have separated God from Jesus and the program of salvation would be over. But Jesus used the Spirit to fight the devil and not Himself. Then of course there were the other temptations by the devil in which Jesus passed and triumphed over them all. This was no doubt hard for Jesus, especially physically but He stayed close to the Father during this time and in this time He grew in Spirit. Jesus from that point on would encounter harder trials and tribulations even to death. But because He stayed spiritually connected to God through His life, He became stronger and stronger and more mature as the Son of God on Earth. Now because of His faithfulness unto death, He was able to pay the price for our sins and give us the ability to be adopted as sons of God and begin our new life as children of the Most High. But God used suffering, all the way unto His death, as one of the tools for Jesus maturation. Now if it happened for Jesus, it will happen for us. Suffering has gotten a bad reputation in the body of Christ. When something bad happens to us, others speculate that we must have done something wrong to upset God and this is our punishment for that. I will never forget one of my first experiences with suffering. When my wife and I lost our first child, I did not understand why. I had turned my life around and really given myself to the Lord, so why should this happen to me?? And when I received the news from my wife about our child, the Lord at that moment, in less than five seconds told me “My peace surpasses all understanding.” Funny, it was Philippians 4:6-9 that we had studied and I had taught from that day before in Sunday school before we had learned of our loss. I felt the Lord hold me tighter and at that moment I became stronger. When I went home I had to not be so macho, per say, but be strong for my wife and I told her what God told me. At the time did it make it easier for her? Maybe not initially but the Lord a day later told me that we have to go through things to grow and be ready to minister to someone else who would go through the same thing. Little did I know 4 months later a close brother and sister in Christ went through the exact thing and we were in position to witness and minister as the Holy Spirit directed. As painful as that situation was for me and my wife, we grew in spiritual strength and maturity in dealing with death and caring for those that are hurting. But it taught me that I needed to learn to depend on God for everything and stay with Him through any trial and tribulation because He is the one that delivers us. Some people look at our loss because we may have done something wrong and others speculated for other reasons but God showed me we all have to suffer because when we have to go through those trial and tribulations we need to learn to depend more and more on God and less on our own abilities. I did not even get where I wanted with this message so we will pick up in the next message with understanding how suffering is used as a tool to raise and mature the sons of God. At Our Father’s Service, Elder Calvin Calhoun, Jr.