17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

2 Corinthians 4:17

Sometimes, when we read this verse, we only think of an affliction as something that is wrong with us, or the trials that we go through. That is only one way to see it. I can show you another way to look at the expression “light affliction.” Think of it as also referring to the discipline to study the Word of God. Joshua 1:8 says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”

Reading and meditating on the Word of God is but a “light affliction” compared to the lasting victory and good success that such discipline rewards you. Sometimes in order to meditate on the Word of God you may have to put off your TV when the soap opera you like is being aired. You may have to turn down an invitation to go out and “hangout” with your friends. You may have to put down the newspaper. You may have to put off the constant drone of the twenty-four hour television network and other pleasures that give you temporary thrills.

Stay in the Word, and refuse those things that excite your flesh. When you stay in the Word and symptoms of sickness and disease come against your body, it is what you have put inside of you that will come out involuntarily and put you up above the circumstance. When temptations come, look on the inside. Develop roots deep within and live life from the inside out. What a tragedy, if in a crisis, you look on the inside and it is empty, there’s nothing there. Make the sacrifice and make the Word of God the nucleus of your life and you will be the better for it.

Confession:

I make the Word of God the nucleus of my life and it brings lasting victory and good success to me in the area of my healing and health.