Throughout the Bible, we learn that joy and pain sometimes go hand in hand. Or rather, we could say that it is through pain and trials that God brings about His plan for us and the world in which we live.

 

If you have pain or sorrow in your life, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve done something wrong or that God is mad at you. In Biblical times, this was the common theory. Think of the question posed to Jesus:

“Who sinned, this man or his parents; that he was born blind?” (Jn. 9:2). While this may have been the accepted wisdom of the day, how do you make sense of the cross?

 

 

As Christians, we often talk about “following Jesus,” and for good reason! This is one of the most basic and central aspects of the Christian journey, and it is impossible to be a Christian without following Christ. That said, we must constantly be reassessing our lives and asking ourselves the hard question: are we following Jesus as He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures, or are we following a version of Jesus in which we remake Him in our own image?