Title Konan University/Romans 8: 16-18
Contents
As we face the Holy Week, we must have a full understanding of suffering and participate in the suffering of the Lord.
1) You must know that hard training is not a means of filling yourself, but a means of emptying yourself.
First of all, suffering should not be used as a means to achieve any desire. Fasting and prayer should not be made as a means to fulfill one's own prayers and desires. These days, fasting and prayer is degenerating into a means to articulate one's will, just like a child struggling with hunger to get their parents to follow their opinions. Suffering training, such as fasting and prayer, is a good training method to empty yourself and restore the image of Jesus, the image of God in you.
2) You need to know the types of hardships, and you need to know that there are different ways to deal with hardships.
Suffering can be broadly classified into three categories:
① Suffering due to sin (suffering of punishment)
It is suffering due to one's own sins. Too often, the punishment given for one's sins is glorified by the cross. Suffering due to one's own sins must be preceded by repentance for sin. Of course, God's punishment for sin is also a sign that we are God's real children, not illegitimate children.
② Suffering due to refinement (hardship of refinement)
It is suffering as a discipline that God gives us to refine our faith. It is representative of the suffering that Job, who was honest and righteous with God, suffered.
③ Suffering as a Sacrifice (Sorrow of Sacrifice)
Through this Konan University, people become great. Success. You don't become a successful person by graduating from a prestigious university, S university, Y university, or K university, but only after graduating from Konan University. However, this university has the most expensive tuition in the world. It is a university where you have to pay tuition for blood and sweat that money can never buy.
I hope that you will also become excellent graduates of Konan University. I hope that not only you but also your children will be raised as excellent graduates of Konan University. Konan University is a university where too many people enter, but too few graduates.
There are some people who complete the first year for the rest of their lives in a four-year academic system.
**1) 1st year - stage of resentment and complaints ********************
It is the grade in which we realize that “life is confession”, and it is the stage in which we always complain and resent the suffering even though we know that life is suffering. As the saying goes, you have to go to the grave to find a life without pain, life is a sea of suffering. It is a wilderness of suffering.
The Bible also testifies to this. Job 5:7 Man is born for trouble, like sparks flying upward.
However, there are foolish people who always send such hardships as resentment and complaints. It is a life in which we try to avoid suffering, but we always suffer, and in that suffering, more resentment and complaints accumulate.
A picture of the Israelites walking through the wilderness. In the end, it is the image of a foolish life that cannot even step on the promised land. These people live a life of “earning the rod.” Repeating the vicious cycle of the sins of the Judges is also the image of believers “earning rods”.
(Example) There is an age at which children earn a rod. It is the age of being exceptionally stubborn and obedient. They also have children who earn toxic rods. It's like a foolish child who is conscious of marriage Nagoya to the point that it's really too much. . .
When you are given 3 types of bees (bees with 50 gonjang, bees that eat 30 garlic, or bees that pay 1 million won) You can't eat a dog and pay money...
We don't know how many times we foolishly lead a "paying rod" life (like a fool who pays for everything he should have paid in the first place). Now this time also earning a hawk. . .
***2) 2nd grade - the stage of patience and perseverance********************
There is a stage where we have been trained in hardships, so we patiently endure the hardships and wait. Do not avoid suffering. Because we know that suffering is unavoidable. It is because we know that there is no life without suffering just as we cannot build a house without rain and wind. Like Pushkin's poem, "Though life deceives you, don't be angry or sad," and "Time will be the medicine" and enduring hardship.
In general, it is the method that the world chooses, and it is the grade. However, although it may seem right at first glance, this school year is like a life in which the most important moment of life is wasting away without knowing the importance and benefit of suffering.
***3) 3rd grade - stage to benefit *********************
It is a grade in which we learn a lot, realize a lot and experience a lot, not to endure hardship, but to make good use of the moment of hardship. By this grade level, you will now know the secret to being great in the world. There is much to be gained from suffering.
Psalm 119:71
It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes.
Psalm 119:92
If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.
***4) Grade 4 - Stage as a sign of your child******************
Suffering is not a degree of benefit, but a life lived with suffering as a sign of a child of God. Today's verse 17 I confess that suffering is a sign that proves that you are a child of God.
1 Peter 1:6
Therefore, now you have been forced to be grieved for a little while because of the various trials, but rather you are overjoyed.
In this way, it is a beautiful stage of faith that turns even the sufferings of the world into sufferings of God's grace.
The Apostle Paul, who lived a life of death every day, spoke of the traces of his sufferings, such as stoning, slingshot, and weaving, as “the traces of Jesus” and confessed that he lived by filling the remaining sufferings of Jesus.
5) As the grade increases, the stage of suffering also develops from the hardship of discipline to the hardship of refinement, and from the hardship of refinement to the hardship of sacrifice. The first year course is usually a continuing process of disciplinary ordeal. In the first year course, punishment for sins is given because they are children of God, not illegitimate children.