7. The Mystery of Glory in Suffering

This is my eighth and final segment in my sermon entitled, "The Mystery of Christ".

7. The Mystery of Glory in Suffering

(Eph 3:12-13) "in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory."
-Our faith in him leads to boldness and confident access to his presence. In our suffering and in our trial we can trust his eternal purpose, so we can cast all our cares on him, so we have boldness to talk to him about it. And it works like this: If you don't trust someone, you won't question or dispute with that person. If you don't like your boss, because he's just a fickle kind of guy and you never know how he's going to react, you're probably not going to come to him often with your problems, you going to just want to go it on your own and figure it out. In the same way, if your going it on your own and not coming to God in your suffering, if you're losing heart in the midst of the struggles of life, that's probably a sign that you're not trusting God fully, you're not having boldness and confidence in your access to him.
-Paul doesn't want the church to lose heart over his suffering in particular because it's their glory. When a gospel minister suffers for the gospel, that's not reason to be discouraged but to exult in the mysterious triumph of the gospel. Because it's through the mystery of Paul being a prisoner-apostle that gospel looks so mysterious, so altogether different to the world. When you understanding the mysterious nature of God's eternal purpose in the world, then it makes sense that God wants to use suffering in the life of a minister of the gospel to make himself looking great, to make himself look so much more worthwhile than anything that this world has to offer. And this doesn't just apply to ministers like Paul, it applies to every Christian. We are to rejoice in suffering, we are to glory in our suffering because of the mystery of Jesus.
-How do you and I deal with suffering, suffering is one of the great mysteries of our world. The mystery of Christ revealed reveals the answer to the mystery of suffering. Since Christ suffered in the flesh, Peter says, arm yourselves with the same attitude because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sins. This is a mystery but it is the undeniable experience of true Christians. Track and Field story; the experience of glory in suffering. How do you react to suffering? God does not always give this strange sense of elation; it is not always easy to rejoice in our various experiences of suffering. But one of the ways to cultivate this ability to glory in suffering is to contemplate the mystery of Christ.
-We make the gospel mysterious to the world when we live this way. When you glory in suffering, when you see Jesus as so great and marvelous a mystery, that suffering in the body means nothing to you, comparatively, if you can have him, you are a complete mystery to the world, and hopefully some of them, as many as God has called, will want to pry deeper into the mystery of Christ. They'll want to search it out and to find the answer to the cosmic mystery, and having searched with all their heart, they will find Jesus. And that's what we want, right, more people to find Jesus.