Rejoice in suffering

Sometime I think that it is such a pain to be a Christian. If someone say that he does not feel any suffering or pain for being a Christian, he is not a real Christian. Because a person believing in Christ is deemed to fight sin for the rest of his life. And fighting with sin is not easy at all. Every day I fight with my sinful nature and I always succumb to it... I can't even be perfect for one day...Some times I even think it is easier to be a non-Christian, I would not have to suffer everyday if I do not believe in God. I wouldn't even aware of my sins at all actually. How great is that! But God is so obvious that I cannot ignore him. So I still have to fight my sins everyday... Even Paul says he cannot do what is right and cannot help but do what is wrong. Paul woes "Wretched man that I am!", and that's exactly what I say everyday!

And that is not all of it... Paul says not only we have to suffer everyday fighting with sins, we have to rejoice in it! Wow he must have been joking! How do we rejoice in suffering! Paul says:

³ Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵ And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

So I think the point is that we know that our suffering worth it. Because when we suffer we endure and when we endure we develop characters - characters that were never in us. When we see the changes happened to us, we see the Holy Spirit has worked on us. We know that we cannot do any of these if the Holy Spirit have not worked on us first. Then we have got the assurance that we indeed have the Holy Spirit. Then we know that we are saved, that we are going to rejoice with our Lord, and our Father one day. Because Jesus has told us, he will not let anything take us from him. So once we know we are saved, we know we will not fall out of his grace. We have the hope which will not fail us. How great is that! As long as we have the hope, we can absolutely rejoice in our suffering. Because we know it worth it.