“For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”
~2 Corinthians 1:5~

God really never stops loving us here. I tend to think sometimes that when it comes to sanctification, God takes us for a time, does his work with us, and then sets us free as purer beings. We go through a rougher time, or an awful time, and then it’s over. After such harder times of refinement or purification you might think, “That was enough to last me a lifetime. Surely we got through most of it then.”

Except as my dad pointed out today, that’s not how it works. Until the day we are called out of this world into the next, we are ever being renewed. The Bible even says it, “though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day (2 Corinthians 4:16).” It’s not renewed every 4-5 years, or every 4-6 months, or once a decade. Every day the Lord is using our circumstances to draw us to him.

Closer to him and closer to who he is. I tend to associate and imagine being conformed into the image of Christ as suffering only. To be conformed to Christ’s image is to be put on a cross to die there as he did. So often I stop there, forgetting Christ himself did not stay on his cross, nor did he stay in the grave he was placed when he left it. His destiny is ours. His entire life, death, and great and everlasting joy.