“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith… we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings…” Romans 5:1-11
You may find this song of suffering encouraging…
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Last week the letter from James said we should “consider it pure joy” when we face trials. Now Paul says about the believers that we “rejoice in our sufferings.”
In our meditation on James, we reflected on how the trials that we endure make us stronger. In fact, all of us voluntarily go through various kinds of “suffering” in order to strengthen our bodies or our golf game or some other thing that we enjoy.
In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he says that suffering produces something even greater than strength, something better than a sharpened skill. He says that suffering produces endurance.
The word for endurance here is sometimes translated “to bear up under.” It doesn’t just mean to tolerate, or to wait for awhile. It means to stick with something, to remain, to be in there struggling. And logically we know that we can never experience endurance, we can never stick with a difficult task unless we first have the hard task. Without a challenge in our life, we never know what it means to stick with it.
But it is endurance that shapes our character. It is learning to stick with something that helps us define what is worth staying with in our lives. And that changes who we are and how we see our world.
And when our character has been shaped in this way, Paul says, this produces hope in us. Why? Because now we see what has value and what does not. Suffering, testing, challenges, these strip away the trivial and the temporary and they leave that which is worth staying for.
So “we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” That is the hope we discover. We see the glory of God because God is present with us in trial, and Jesus is the end and goal of our striving.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, fill me with rejoicing in all circumstances so that others may see the power of hope. Amen.