A Thought on Suffering [by T. Austin-Sparks]

Recently, Mum gave me an article to read by T. Austin-Sparks that spoke about suffering and how when one suffers, it is a suffering together of the whole Body of Christ. It encouraged me, so I thought I'd like to share it on here today. When there are battles and sufferings, we can know that the same sufferings are being experienced by our brothers and sisters in the world, and that Christ is with us through it all. I pray it blesses you.

"We, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another." (Romans 12:5)

We are a part of a Body. Many of our sufferings are not on our own account at all. Many of the sufferings of the children of God have nothing whatever to do with their own faults or their own failing. They are suffering in a related way, they are suffering for the Body's sake, they are entering into the battle; the conflict of this one great testimony. Sometimes it is almost uncanny when the Lord has something in view in relation to His testimony of Life, how for no reason whatever, on no account at all, we discover that we are involved and ours is not an isolated experience. All sorts of people all over the place are having the same kind of experience - a terrific sense of pressure, upset, annoyance, anything to frustrate - it is happening all round, testifying that in the spiritual realm, in the realm of the Spirit, there is a fine, sensitive oneness which matters to the Lord, and therefore matters to the enemy.

Do not always take your sufferings as some controversy that the Lord has with you. That is the twist the enemy often gives. Be open to the Lord to be checked up on anything, but do not always take it that the things which are happening to you and causing you trouble and suffering are due to your own failure or wrong. You are involved in something very much more than that.

By T. Austin-Sparks from: The Testimony of the Christ - Chapter 7