Holy Suffering Of Saints
Choosing to suffer means that there must be something wrong with us, but choosing God's will, even if it means you will suffer, is something very different. No normal, healthy person ever chooses suffering; they simply choose God's will, just as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not. And no person should ever dare to interfere with the lesson of suffering being taught in another person's life.
The saint who satisfies the heart of Jesus will make other saints strong and mature for God. But the people used to strengthen us are never those who sympathize with us; in fact, we are hindered by those who give us their sympathy, because sympathy only serves to weaken us. No one better understands a saint than the saint who is as close and as intimate with Jesus as possible. If we accept the sympathy of another saint, our spontaneous feeling is, "God is dealing too harshly with me and making my life too difficult." That is why Jesus said that self-pity was of the devil (Matthew 16:21-23).
We must be merciful to God's reputation. It is very easy for us to tarnish God's character because He never argues back; He never tries to defend or vindicate Himself. Beware of thinking that Jesus needed sympathy during His life on this earth. He refused the sympathy of people because in His great wisdom He knew that no one on earth understood His purpose. He accepted only the sympathy of His Father and the angels (Luke 15:10).
Look at God's waste of His saints, according to the world's standard. God appears to plant His saints in the most useless placed. Yet Jesus never measured His life by how or where He was of the greater use. God places His saints where they will bring the most glory to Him, and we are totally incapable of judging where that may be.
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