Things That Break Your Heart

1 Peter 5:10 Yes, you will suffer for a short time. But after that, God will make everything right. He will make you strong. He will support you and keep you from falling. He is the God who gives all grace. He chose you to share in his glory in Christ. That glory will continue forever.

Suffering is one of those conundrums in life that can easily destroy your faith. How could a loving God possibly allow me to go through this? THIS?!!

I wonder if I could ask you today just quietly to sit back and think about the greatest period of suffering in your life – that one thing, that one broken relationship, that one adverse situation that tore you apart –  that almost destroyed you?

I wonder as you look back on that and compare who you are today with the person you were before that profound piece of suffering in your life, how different you are here and now from that person back then?

What’s that suffering done to your character? Knocked off some of your rough edges, softened you perhaps? Mellowed you, made you more tolerant, taken you down a peg or two, humbled you? What’s the legacy of that suffering in you?

1 Peter 5:10 Yes, you will suffer for a short time. But after that, God will make everything right. He will make you strong. He will support you and keep you from falling. He is the God who gives all grace. He chose you to share in his glory in Christ. That glory will continue forever.

God has this habit of making things right – not always in our circumstances, more often in our makeup, building our character, strengthening us, supporting us, upholding us, lavishing His grace upon us – as He carries us toward our ultimate glory.

And man, that changes you. You can’t help but be changed by that. That’s why more often than not, it’s the things that break your heart that end up fixing your vision.

That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.