Bible Study Thoughts

We have just started a new book in our Women's Bible Study on Wednesday mornings.  It's called The Cup and The Glory.  It's an intense study.  It's on suffering.  The study was chosen to line up with Easter, to help us prepare our hearts to worship God in a deeper way as we focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus.  It's a mind boggling, soul focusing, and all around challenging study.  and... I'm only two chapters in.

I just read the chapter on "the cup." With the reference taken from Mark 10 when James and John ask to be seated next to Christ in glory.  Jesus replies, "You do not know what you are asking for.  Are you able to drink the cup that I drink..."  The author then goes on to explain what the cup is.  It's a cup of suffering.  Of refining.  Of growth.  A time that makes us more like Christ.  It followed the chapter on the wilderness, which is defined as a time of what appears to be the absence of the presence of the Lord.  A time when we think He is not with us.  The Holy Spirit is always with us.  But there are times of suffering when we just don't see it.  These are times given to us from our Lord, our Savior meant to grow us, to refine us, to make us more like Him.

Those times are our cups.  The cups given to us from Him.  Where He might remove things from our lives in order that we look to Him more.  These are times of suffering, we are even to ask for. Or at least that's what I think so far.  I have more to study and questions to answer before I understand this more.

I'm left in a stupor.. a haze perhaps, over this idea.  I know this to be true.  We are promised times of trials and of suffering all throughout the New Testament.  God promises to never leave us or forsake us in these times.  To refine us.  I look forward to understanding this more.  To knowing how to pray about this.  To God shaping my heart through this Bible Study to be more like Him and to understand suffering more.

It is a great study, one that leaves me pondering and thinking...

I won't leave you hanging on this one.  I will take you all along with me as I learn about this.  Hopefully once a week as I learn more!