The 32nd chapter of the book of Job begins like this ,
“So these three men ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes”
I’ve purposely avoided the book of Job because I wasn’t ready to deal with the concept of suffering. I failed to recognize that the story wasn’t only about suffering, but about the connection between pride and suffering, the Lord’s discipline and its righteous fruits. But dodging reading about suffering didn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t experience the reality of hardships. The last few years have been marked with one trial after the other and it is still ongoing. Scriptures say that the Lord delivers the afflicted by their afflictions and open their ears by adversity ; we are also encouraged to consider it pure joy whenever we face trials of many kinds for the testing of our faith produces perseverance, and we must allow perseverance to run its course , so that we can be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. The discipline of the Lord comes through suffering and although it may not be pleasing at the time , it leads to a harvest of righteousness for those who have been trained by it. The biggest thorn on our side is pride and God hates pride and will not tolerate it in the life of the believer. Most of us aren’t even aware of the deep roots of pride in our lives until the Lord brings it to our minds through adversity. I’ll strongly encourage you to watch the video below in which Francis Chan addresses the topic of pride and its connection with suffering.
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My name is Tayib Salami and I started Tayibs.com for the sole purpose of exploring difficult questions about the Christian faith that most of us shy away from. In 2017, I entered a very dark time in my life and it’s only by the grace of the Living God that I’m still alive today. It led me to really go deeper in my faith and consider a myriad of questions that I never thought about asking myself or others before. Welcome and enjoy the ride with me.