Even as the Lord continued to lay on my heart the theme of affliction and how to overcome it, I felt so encouraged to know that God has promised me the following:
1. Comfort in affliction
2. Glory in affliction
3. Joy in affliction
4. Unshaken in affliction
5. Endurance in affliction
6. Reaching out in affliction
7. Hope in affliction
But first, can we choose to be afflicted? Is affliction forced upon us? Are there circumstances where we are given a choice - to choose Jesus and be imprisoned or to deny Him and be set free?
Choosing to be afflicted with God's people is very interesting. Was Moses really someone who chose to suffer affliction or was he someone who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?
The more I read God's Word the more I realized that it was Moses own choice to be afflicted with his people rather than enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.
I believe Moses made the choice the day he killed the Egyptian who was beating up his people. I believe that he wanted to do something for the Hebrew slaves (to whom he felt inextricably linked by reason of his Jewish ancestry). He made his choice to stand alongside them and he used his fists to do that.
He may have used methods of the flesh but God saw that his heart was for his people and God honored his choice by turning it around for good. The choice that he made to stand with the Hebrew slaves led to him having to flee from Pharoah who sought to kill him. Again God turned it around for good!
By refusing to renounce Christ when faced with a choice (in Moses case he demonstrated that choice by doing something), we are already making an intentional choice to follow the Lord Jesus Christ.
Moses made such a choice in Hebrews 11:25 "choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin". Why did Hebrews put it like this?
It would have been so easy for Moses to treat the suffering of his people as remote from himself. He could just very well have said to himself "this has nothing to do with me. I am safe and sound in the palace. I have a great future in Egypt. Let those Hebrew slaves continue to suffer. I have nothing to do with them."
Yet somehow Moses knew his destiny. He knew that his place was not in Egypt but suffering affliction with his people! I believe that this motivated him to do what he did!
As I consider this theme of blessings in affliction (again and again) God is speaking to me on this, I realized that God has given us a value to affliction. Gold has value, money has value, silver has value, houses and lands have value - but spiritual things carry eternal value!
What is the value of our affliction in Christ as compared to the promises of God for us who are right in the midst of it?
2 Cor 4:17
"For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory"
What is the value of our affliction on earth? Answer: It is light.
What is the value of our affliction in eternity?
Answer: Exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
Thus what is the value of affliction in this life is considered light when we consider it against the exceeding blessings it is bound to produce!
Here are the promises of God in affliction:
1. Comfort in affliction
Psalm 119:50
"This is my comfort in my affliction, for Your Word has given me life"
2. Glory in affliction
2 Cor 4:17
"For our light affliction, which is but for a moment is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory"
3. Joy in affliction
2 Cor 8:2
"that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded in the riches of their liberality"
1 Thess 1:16
"And you became followers of us and of the Lord having received the Word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Spirit"
4. Unshaken in affliction
1 Thess 3:3
"that no one should be shaken by these afflictions; for you yourselves know that we are appointed to this"
5. Endurance in affliction
2 Timothy 4:5
"But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry"
6. Evangelize in affliction
2 Timothy 4:5
"But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry"
2 Timothy 3:11
"persecutions, afflictions which happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra - what persecutions I endured. And out of them all the Lord delivered me"
