WHY NOT RECYCLE OUR TRASH?

Have we not heard what God does?  Do we not know His great dynamic?  Did we not get the message that God does the amazing?  Still today?

I remind you of something you've always known but tend for forget.  God recycles the things that pull us down and makes fuel from those things that we can give aid to others.  Nothing is a waste.

Isaiah 53 is known as the Suffering Servant chapter.  It promotes Jesus as coming to earth to suffer enormously, immeasurably, so that indecent sinners (which would be all of us) could have life; both now and in heaven.  Suffering; the very thing no one wants.

But, we get the idea of misery....in abundance...don't we?  Pain is everywhere we turn. If we don't have it at the moment we can immediately list twenty people we know who do.  The world is in a world of hurt.

God is brilliant.  He shares His plan via the perception we see in Jesus.  He suffered for a reason.  He suffered to take on our sins and to set us free.  That's a huge secret. Jesus used his hurt to help others.

When we regard pain only as something from which we must find quick relief, we live in constant hunt.  But when we take the very thing that tends to shut us down and transform it into useful purpose, it suddenly becomes our fuel.  We take advantage of the very thing that meant to take us out.

So how does that work?  The most helpful friends you have are those who have lived in your shoes by experiencing hurt where you are injured.  The recovering alcoholic offers superior assistance to the those who hurt over their addiction.  The woman who lost a child of eight years old is far more productive in ministering to the next young momma who suffers similar loss.

We can either allow our misery to eat us alive by shutting us down or we can apply God's transforming power by using life's interferences which can thrust us into effective ministry to bless others who hurt as we once did.

Jesus is the Master at ministering to a world filled with agony.  He learned how to help by becoming just like us.  This is our secret as well.  Trials are not a waste.  These are our permeating fuel to offer strength to the weary.

May we have the will to let God recycle our pain-trash.  May He make us Suffering Servants since we will suffer anyway.  May we let our struggles be used to bless the entire world...now!