Being in business for myself has its rewards, like when you make a good check,  but also its lows when your money maker (VAN) breaks down and all your rewards go toward fixing it.

I also know what it means to sleep in a van when the wind chill is 25 below zero, folks, its not fun, its suffering.

And yet, when I think about suffering, its nothing compared to what our Savior suffered for us on that cross so that you and I could be with him in heaven.

The apostles suffered for Christ, but one thing I’ve learned, you’ll never amount to much for Christ, until you have suffered for Christ first.

Think about Peter, he was boastful, a big mouth, and just a pain in the butt at times. But after Peter suffered for Christ, we see a new and different Peter.

He became a man of boldness, compassion and filled with faith.

The Apostle Paul after much suffering, became a man who would die for Christ before he would ever deny him, his love for the lost was his passion.

A pastor will never be a great pastor, until he goes through suffering, it will either make him so that God can use him to touch the lives of people or it will break him so that God has to put him on a shelf never to be heard from again.

When people think about suffering, most think about physical pain of some kind, or a loss of income, but thats not always the case.

Some suffering is not so outwardly noticeable, sometimes its quiet and not obvious at all, and yet the person is suffering.

Remember when God put Moses in the desert, he wandered around going nowhere, there was little physical suffering, and yet Moses was suffering.

God was dealing with Moses on a whole different level, the spiritual level,

For 40 years, God was dealing with Moses, shaping him to become a great leader of his people, but why did it take 40 years?

Well maybe, Moses was a slow learner?  Maybe it took Moses 40 years in the desert to get his spiritual life in order.

For the past 2 years, I’ve been in the desert and Gods been dealing with my spiritual life, molding, teaching and correcting.

Sometimes I think suffering physically is much easier than suffering spiritually, because suffering spiritually hits us where we live.  God deals with our heart condition, our thought life, our motives, and our desires.

Its in our desert times when we learn the most about ourselves and some of the things that God shows us, are the things we don’t want to acknowledge are true about ourselves.

But if we don’t acknowledge them, then we can’t grow spiritually and we stay in the desert longer.

Perhaps your suffering spiritually right now,  God wants to change something in your life that he isn’t pleased with,  you need to stop resisting him and listen to what he’s saying.

This past week, it got down to 7 degrees and for awhile I couldn’t get warm as I sat in my van waiting for my next job and I thought about how the Apostles slept outdoors with no shelter and yet during that time with Jesus, they learned the most about themselves and God was changing them into men of God.

Gods heart desire is to make us to be like him, and if I have to stay in the desert for 38 more years to be like my Savior, then I gladly will do so.

Are you having a desert experience?  If so, open your heart up to the Lord and let him examine it, allow him to make all necessary changes.

Its through these changes that God makes that brings us a heart of rejoicing and peace.