So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Your afflictions as a believer are real and painful
For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
2 Corinthians 4:11-12
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
Galatians 2:20
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
2 Corinthians 4:8-9
Your afflictions as a believer are meaningful now
our inner self is being renewed day by day.
2 Corinthians 4:16
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:18
Your afflictions as a believer are working for your hope of future glory
For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
2 Corinthians 4:17
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1:2-4
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 5:2-5
“An unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” But I suspect perfect joy goes further as both the longing for the object and the longing for the longing. Joy grows when the longing is met with a promise for greater fulfillment. Charging through the golden gates, the party was met by more beauty, more colors, and a greater world than they had seen before. “Of course,” said the Faun, “The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside.” The light ahead was growing stronger. Lucy saw that a great series of many-colored cliffs led up in front of them like a giant’s staircase. And then she forgot everything else, because Aslan himself was coming, leaping down from cliff to cliff like a living cataract of power and beauty. As the Lion came to meet them, Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.” “No feat of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?” Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them. “Your father and mother and all of you are,” said Aslan softly, “as you used to call it in the Shadowlands – dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.” And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
C.S. Lewis
Your substantive, day-by-day transformative hope as a believer is eternal glory with Jesus
As we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
2 Corinthians 4:18-5:1
A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who though most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.
C.S. Lewis
See him nearing death. Listen to his breath, Through the ebbing pain: Final whisper: “Gain!”
John Piper
