suffering for Christ or lack there of

"...who are being protected by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials..."

1 Peter 1:3-7 has been tugging at my heart. It speaks of being protected by God's power through faith, about suffering through trials and testing your faith, and about the inexpressible joy that you receive when your faith proves strong sanctifying you and working in you the salvation of your souls.

I've also been reading In His Steps.
"The imitation of Jesus which had begun with the volunteers in the church was working like leaven in the organization, and Henry Maxwell would even thus early in his life have been amazed if he could have measured the extent of desire on the part of his people to take up the cross. While he was speaking this morning, before he closed with a loving appeal to the discipleship of two thousand years' knowledge of the Master,many a man and woman in the church was saying as Rachel had said so passionately to her mother: “I want to do something that will cost me something in the way of sacrifice.” “I am hungry to suffer something.” Truly, Mazzini was right when he said that no appeal is quite so powerful in the end as the call: “Come and suffer.”

Basically, I feel my life is so comfortable. I can't really think of any way that I am really suffering or any trials that I am going through. I can't help but wonder if I'm missing out on something. I want to experience the fullness of the joy that God gives when you follow Him completely sold out. I don't know what that means, but am praying for God's call to be made clear on how I can better follow Him daily.


Now, don't get me wrong... I know that following Christ may not always have "dramatic" evidence of suffering or trials. However, I feel a call to something more. I feel that in order for me to grow, I have to "go". GO and make disciples, GO and serve the poor, GO and take up my cross. This is a day to day battle and there are opportunities right under my nose that I should take as well as opportunities to step out more in the community.

Please pray for God's guidance and growth for me as I seek to follow Him more closely.


NO SCAR?


Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land;
I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star.
Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers; spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned.
Hast thou no wound?

No wound? No scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And piercèd are the feet that follow Me.
But thine are whole; can he have followed far
Who hast no wound or scar?



BY AMY CARMICHAEL,

IRISH MISSIONARY TO INDIA FOR 55 YEARS