Week 3 - Day 2

Worship

(From pages 36-37 of Holding On To Hope)

Suffering is God's ultimate demonstration of His goodness and care for you! Do you believe that? It is! Romans 5:8 tells us us God showed His love for us in the suffering and death of the Lord Jesus Christ. God's plan to redeem you included the ugliness, the awfulness of suffering and death - that of His very own Son!

Hebrews 5:7-9 tells us Jesus "offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation." (emphasis added)

Does it help you to know that Jesus wrestled with that plan even as He submitted to it? The second purpose of suffering that Nancy Guthrie brings out is found in these verses - Obedience is learned through suffering. When you find yourself agonizing over God's plan that is causing you such pain, meditate on these verses and see that Jesus understands!

Isaiah wrote, "But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief..." (Isaiah 53:10a emphasis added)

Nancy Guthrie writes, "It pleased the Father? How can this be?

"The answer is that God was pleased by what Jesus' death accomplished for you and me. He was pleased to demonstrate His love for the human race through such a significant sacrifice.

"Amazingly, history's most evil act brought about the greatest good of all time...

"The Cross, then, is the ultimate example of God's ability to work all things together for good..."

On Day 2 of our study, the author addresses the true meaning of worship - it always involves sacrifice! She challenges us to consider what true worship will look like in our daily lives. Read John 4:23-24. What does it mean to worship "in spirit and in truth"? What do you need to do differently this week to worship God more fully?