Enduring hardship with the perspective of heaven | God's glory, our delight

<p>Stephanie invites us today to continue the conversation about depth of faith through trials and tribulation and hardship and suffering this side of heaven. She then moves to a glorious reality: Scripture is quite clear: there is a glorious inheritance that awaits us.</p> <p>Warning! This episode is particularly chockfull of Bible verses! It might maybe even contain mentions of some of Stephanie's favorite books- namely, The Lord of the Rings, The Pilgrim's Progress and The Chronicles of Narnia! She explains that Christian fantasy books can be a powerful drawing to point us to the reality of the perspective of heaven!</p> <p>So first, we discuss hardships. Hardships force us to decide if we’re going to trust God or self. Trusting self can take many different shapes in afflictions:</p> <p>-        Plowing through and trying harder</p> <p>-        Swallowing your emotions and pushing through</p> <p>-        Crumbling in despair and despondency</p> <p>-        Blaming everyone</p> <p>-        Self-loathing</p> <p>-        Choosing to distrust God.</p> <p>Or trusting God. It’s both harder and easier. It has to do with surrender and rest, and it does lead to greater delight in God through the hardship. If you trust God through your affliction, you will find yourself delighting in Him more on the other side of your affliction—and maybe even while you are still in it.</p> <p>If you have truly decided to make the glory of God your priority at any cost, then like Paul you can begin to see afflictions and thorns as blessings. Instead of recoiling, you can start embracing and maybe even welcoming afflictions. Don’t go looking for them—Scripture says they will come soon enough. But when God, in His perfect timing, allows afflictions your way, what if we had enough faith to say, “God thank you for this opportunity to learn to trust you, love you, delight in you.” That is exotic faith. It’s not your plain vanilla, slap-on faith that makes you feel good. This is exotic faith from deep inside the trenches.</p> <p>Resting in Hi