Love For Suffering

So, tonight a friend was talking to me about the Lord just teaching him His suffering. And like most of us, he wasn't all that stoked about it. When out of my mouth came the following, "I love suffering! If it wasn't for the suffering I have experienced I wouldn't be where I am right now."

I went on to recount how one thing happened right after another. Having everything I had, everything I had worked for be taken from me or collapse. Friends, family, ministry turning their backs on me or just being gone. Keep in mind I'm not playing the victim, I'm by far not perfect, just laying down the perspective of where I was at. I had come to Nashville on a crazy trip of glory and miracles and everything I had built, almost every relationship I had made, gone. In a couple of months.

I had come to this city with prophetic words of grandeur and the more I believed what God had spoken, the more I seemed to lose. I was at what seemed to be the end of my rope. I lost everything and almost everyone leaving me with a 1 hour walk in the morning to the bus stop, followed by a 2 hour ride to work, to work 8 hours making cold calls trying to sell stuff, just to take the same return trip home. That was my life for a few months. Having just enough to get by.

So, I learned perseverece. I refused to quit. Most mornings I would walk and pray in tongues or thank God for the words he had spoken over my life. I'd would listen to worship and do the best I could to change the atmosphere over my life. And about a year later, my life has completely changed. I have a new job, I've been in the top 5 enterprise wide at my job for a couple months in a row now. (We have over 1500 callers that I'm ranked with.) I have several business opportunities I'm working on. I wake up alive and full each day letting heaven flow out of me into others. My life has completely changed.

So yes, I love suffering. Or maybe better yet, I love the fruits of suffering. Everything is just a perspective away. Change your perspective. Change your life.