Our Lives

When you experiencing bad condition over you, what you’re going to do? cursing God on the act because of yourself? Moses leads God’s people out of Egypt, but when times get tough they say, “You have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” Only after his death do they really appreciate him. Some consolation prize!
Gratefulness is something priceless and rare when you’re in bad things, lets learn it from character of people in the bible.

Job lives a righteous life before God, but who appreciates him when the tide turns against him? His wife calls him a fool and his so-called friends try to hammer into his skull the message that it is all his fault.
Jeremiah has the unhappy mission of declaring to Israel that Jerusalem will be destroyed and the people will go into exile for their sins. Who appreciates him? No one. He is slandered, arrested, imprisoned, and called a traitor.

Paul spends long, grueling years in missionary work, but some of the churches he himself founded discredit him. To his detractors in Corinth he bares his soul, and in his sarcasm you can feel his pain:
“We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.” (1 Corinthians 4:10-13)

And Christ’s work can indeed take a heavy toll on us. Paul writes again to the Corinthians:
“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.” (2 Cor. 1:8)
Then, when he has recovered a bit, he tells them:
“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10)

In the midst of the incredible pressure, he receives strength from God that helps him to make it through. Jesus said:
“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12)

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