Philippians 1:29-30: "For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in Him but also suffer for His sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had now and how hear that I still have."
In case you misread, pardon me to paraphrase in context of Paul's theology: not only has God graced you with faith, but even more so He has graced you with the reality of suffering. Suffering is, in fact, a gift of God on par with the gifts of faith and repentance. But, you may ask, how is suffering a gift? Why would God love us so much to have us suffer for His sake?
This is a difficult question and to understand it pushes the bounds of language. Two analogies will thus be employed to answer this difficult question. Neither of them is perfect but thought of together they may, hopefully, serve to help us understand how and why Paul could say that God grants us to suffer for the sake of Christ.
The first is a pearl. A pearl begins as an irritant; a small grain of sand. In the shell of the oyster, the pearl is formed through the overwhelming pressure applied by the oyster. Imagine for a second the extreme irritation and conceivable suffering endured by the oyster during that process. Yet it is because of that suffering, as a result of that pain that a pearl is formed.
The second analogy is that of weight lifting. Imagine you went to the gym and saw a man standing before the mirror with doing basic bicep curls. In one arm he was lifting a 40 lbs. weight while in the other he was lifting a 5 lbs. weight. Now which arm would you assume to be the stronger? We understand that it is the muscle that is forced to lift the heavier weight that becomes stronger by virtue of of the suffering endured during exercise. In fact, it is the weight itself that causes the muscular growth.
Taken together perhaps we can begin to see the reason Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, can say that God has granted us the gift of suffering for the sake of Christ. The pearl of character, the muscles of virtue are formed using the resources of suffering for the sake of Christ. Let us then find great joy that God has blessed us in this most wonderful way: that He would build character in us through the suffering akin to His Son!
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