Summary
Living a Christian lifestyle is guaranteed to bring trouble, suffering, and persecution. The Bible tells us this and we can’t ignore it; knowing why God permits trials and persecutions helps us learn how to handle them. Instead of passively accepting them, we must actively resist them; it’s in the resistance that we maintain the victory that Jesus obtained for us. We do this by faith, knowing that God’s grace will show up in the middle of it. Believing in God’s love for us is the key to successfully moving through an uncomfortable situation; painful things don’t happen because He hates us, but because He wants to mature us. Maturing without falling back into self-effort requires that we depend on God, not on ourselves. Letting Him work in us to change us from the inside allows Him to transform us into the mirror image of Christ..
