Me: Prodigal, It does not look like you are in a good spot right now. In fact you look like your about to get a hurtin.
Prodigal: I KNOW, I NEED HELP!
Me: Hold on I am coming to help you in your affliction.
This is from Malcolm Muggeridge
Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my seventy-five years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness. In other words, if it ever were to be possible to eliminate from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo jumbo….the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal and trivial to be endurable. This, of course, is what the Cross signifies. And it is the Cross, more than anything else, that has called me inexorably to Christ.
It seems at this time this affliction just keeps given you hurt. Why would Christ lead to the way of something that hurts you? Because he is stretching you and building you up in a way that you need to be stretched. Emotionally and Spiritually, Christ is teaching you new skills. This is the same as when you train in a sport and have a new exercise. It hurts your muscle’s at first and you are sore afterward physically. Well spiritually you are hurting but your trust muscles in Christ are growing! You cannot understand this all today so maybe you just decided to hang in there and not give up and not run from God.
Acts 5:14
And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women.
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
