Rejoice In Your Suffering

The Lord put on my heart this morning. “Rejoicing in your suffering Danielle” – I have been teaching you the last 44 years to trust in me alone. I’ve been using this time to teach you how to turn to me. How to seek my face when there seems to be no way. How to rejoice in your desert time. That my promises remain true even when you can’t see the promised land. That I will carry you upon my shoulders when you can’t walk or run. That I feed you good food. That you need to eat that which I say is good and enough. That I see you, I hear you. That you can rest in me. That I am a good good father. You are mine Danielle.”

I am often oblivious in the moment as to what God is doing in my heart when he allows trials and suffering into my life.

I don’t know about you but I can remember more years spent in the desert – the valley of the shadow of death then on mountaintops. Much of my life has been spent living by faith that God is good and he will get me through and that dying in the desert is not an option. I want to see the promised land.

This morning it struck me that God has changed me greatly in my time in the desert. He’s weakened my feisty, rebellious, self sufficient spirit all the while teaching me to trust him to get me through the desert.

My desert time has not been a waste … not one minute of the last 44 years have been wasted. He was at work. Doing good in me. He’s my all in all and everything I need to get through all that I’m faced with.

Romans 5:3-5

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Trials suck, suffering or watching someone suffer sucks but what doesn’t suck is the fruit that comes from the hard days trusting God in our trials and suffering. Those days teach us that God is faithful, trustworthy and good.

Lord, I know I’m not the only one faced with a hard day today. Would you be our light in this dark moment. Water for our thirsty soul. Food that nourishes us and helps us to get up. ♥️🙌🏻