Читать книгу Boyd's Commentary - R.H. Boyd Publishing Corporation - Страница 25

When you examine your life and all of the great things you’ve been blessed to achieve and accomplish, do you appreciate all it took to get where you are? It’s easy to reflect on with delight all of the positive features of your journey. But what about the pitfalls, setbacks, and failures. Do we reflect on them too? Do we celebrate the worth of those experiences with the same enthusiasm?

While we don’t like to think about the negative experiences in our lives, sometimes they are what God uses to bring out the best in us. Through Him we learn how to appreciate the purpose for the pain and realize our purpose in the pain. This is part of what it means in Romans 8:28 when it says God works all things out for His good and holy purpose.

The reason our ancestors risked life and limb time and time again to emancipate other enslaved people was not just because they themselves knew the pain of slavery. They were driven by a sense of purpose. Living by the light of our purpose enables us not only to endure the pain from hardship but to grow as a result of it. Hardship helps break up the ground of the heart so we can be exposed before God. At the point of Joseph’s deepest despair, he discovered purpose in his pain. While in prison, Joseph encountered and used his gift for the king’s chief butler, through whom he eventually was granted an audience with the king. Through the crushing of Joseph’s spirit, the gift God planted within was given room to flourish.

We all are born with purpose, though we may not be aware of it. Buried beneath the layers of our hurt from life experiences, we learn to ignore the gift God has put within. Just as it took prison to liberate Joseph toward his destiny, it sometimes takes being broken to be whole in our purpose. Let us come to accept our pain and to use it redemptively.

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