Eager to Follow

So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin. You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God. You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols.

- 1 Peter 4:1-3

Pain is most likely to happen to everyone. In this world we have hard times and happy times. We face all kinds of problems or troubles. This is what life is, it's an imperfect world. But pain is even more imminent for every follower of Jesus the Messiah. In fact 1 Peter clearly states that since we follow Jesus as our Master, then we should be ready to live the kind of life He lived, ready to suffer and persistent to persevere. GOD has a reason for pain and suffering. Pain and suffering purges us from sin. It keeps us in the right path where GOD wants us to take. Because of pain, it's most likely that we will not have time to even think about pleasing ourselves because all we can do is grieve for the pain or find ways to get out of pain. Somehow pain is needed for every human being, to discipline and correct us, aligning us to the will of GOD.

When sin is purged out of us because we have suffered, learning from our mistakes we strive hard not to be in a position where we should have to suffer again. That is why the Bible says we will be anxious to do the will of GOD, because if we are not in His will, we will again have to go through suffering when HE allows us to go through the fires of fiery trials. We will never know the gravity or weight of our sin unless we have suffered the consequences of it or punished by it. When we have gone through the refining fire of these trials, we are cleansed of sin and we realize that we can make life better by following GOD's will. In fact, we will be anxious to know and do His will because we understand that GOD is real and HE is always actively involved in our lives whether we actively involve Him in our lives or not. HE is involved with every activity under the sun. He is alive and is concerned with us. When we understand GOD's great love and the plans He has to bless us, we will be more than willing to do what GOD wants us to do. We want to coordinate with HIS plans for us, we trust the GOD who loves us and has the best in store for us. We won't even think about going back to our old life of sin and or look back on how our lives used to be. We will be grateful for the salvation we received in Jesus and we will move forward with GOD's Spirit at work within us. We are eager to follow HIS leading because we understand we are nothing without HIM.