'Sometimes we suffer'

(Acts 9.15-16)

 We are a society that worships youthfulness, vigor, health, success, extravagance and luxury. As a society we hold up for emulation the arrogant, greedy and crass among us...idealizing if not idolizing those traits and individuals as evidence of God's blessings.

We tend to look upon those who suffer or are impoverished as lacking God's blessings...of perhaps having missed God's will or perhaps just not quite having 'what it takes.'

As Christians in 'western' society we talk a lot about Jesus as Son of God but practically ignore His direct teachings preferring to follow those teachings of Paul.

As Christians in 'western' society we base our 'christianity' upon a religion artifacted out of the Middle Ages with its wrappings and trappings and dogmas. In western Protestantism we link our biases to extracted Pauline passages. We value many of his personal biases and statements directed to specific cultures and traditions as oracle of God and tend to ignore statements that truly were Oracle of God.

One of those statements that truly was Oracle of God was this about Saul of Tarsus, "15. But the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. 16. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." Acts chapter 9

It was God's Will that the Apostle Paul suffer.

Paul was God's "chosen instrument to carry (His) name before the (world)" and it was God's Will that Paul suffer.

Why?

Do you remember Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" saying,

“Theirs not to reason why, 
Theirs not to make reply, 
Theirs but to do and die, 
Into the valley of death, 
Rode the six hundred.”

We must not become so wrapped in our society's values that we assume it our 'right' to respond to the Will of God by reasoning why and making reply.

If God has called you - you quite possibly will suffer. Those who haven't, perhaps just haven't yet...

Are we called to a better calling and a different Will of God than Paul, Peter, James, John and the others? We are each to follow where He leads and accept the Grace that will be sufficient for our needs, whatever - wherever.

So, "...continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13. for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose." Philippians 2.12