Different Devotional Day 4

These are my thoughts and favorite lines from the @YouVersion plan 'Different'.

---

Physical and emotional pain have a way of changing our brains. It’s why getting burned changes how we think about fire. It’s how a difficult diagnosis changes a lifestyle, often creating passionate advocates in the fight for a cure. When painful realities enter our bodies, or the bodies of people we love, they change our thinking forever. Peter wrote about suffering in 1 Peter 4:1, he wrote as a man with a new outlook on suffering. Painful experiences often lead to powerful passion. Jesus’ physical pain, His páschō, should be the basis of our passion. Jesus’ death and resurrection has the ultimate power to change our thinking, and in turn change our behavior.

Questions/Thoughts

Read 1 Peter chapter 4, ask God to show you how Jesus’ physical pain and passion can change your thinking, giving you the resolve to be done with sin.

On a daily basis I don’t normally think about the suffering Jesus endured. But today after reading this chapter and it being close to Easter I have a plan of sorts. Every morning I want to reflect on his last days. By reading the Bible I can do this. But I also want to meditate on the passages I will read. Just sit in silence and think or not think. Giving God the space to speak. I don’t do this enough and I feel God calling me gently to spend time in his presence.

Also, ask God to show you how to pray for people around the world who are suffering physical and emotional persecution for their faith. I believe prayer is amazing and we should definitely be praying for persecuted christians. I also strongly feel whatever God commands you to do you should obey. So whatever God is commanding you to do do it. Don’t worry about what he’s commanding others to do. Focus on what you should be obeying from God. This will help to ensure his plans, purposes, and will is being done And you are not getting distracted by what he is commanding others to do.