"Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. ... Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed." (Heb. 12:7, 12-13)
I hadn't really intended on writing anything today. However, the Lord spoke to me this morning about hardship and the good that comes from it. Lately, I've had several friends who have gone through some hard times, whether it's been a depression, a deep hopelessness, or even just feeling like they're stuck in a funk with no way out.
Here's how it happens: trials come, and we plead for relief. Circumstances oppress, and we pray for deliverance. Health, relationships, work, and just about everything else in our lives grow difficult, and we ask God to straighten them out. We don't like the pressures of life, and we lift every anxious thought to God, as we should. But we forget a guiding principle: Hardship is part of the program. It grows us up into maturity. There are things that God wants to do with us that cannot be done in a perfect environment.
We view discipline as God's remedial recourse for a Christian who has gone far astray. But it is more universal than we like to think. It comes not only to those who have failed, but to those whom God is preparing for greater success. It's what a father does for his children, and it's what our Father does for us. Only those who are already perfect can avoid the trials that God allows - which means no one can. The trials will come, and God will let them stay for a while.
We don't like pain. We ask God to take away every reminder that we live in a broken world, but He won't do it. We will live out our days with some scars, or sometimes even with open wounds. We cannot become ministers of His grace otherwise. We can't even learn it for ourselves until He puts us in great need of it. If we are to represent our merciful Father in a broken world, we must actually live in that broken world. We must know the needs that require mercy, and we must know them from experience. There is no other way.
As finite and imperfect human beings, we constantly ask God to clean up every messy area of our lives, and to brighten every dark corner and dress up every shabby appearance. That's okay; our concerns are His concerns. But don't expect perfection. The perfect world we crave is for a future glory, not for now. Ease and comfort are not usually His prescription for us, because they will not prepare us for that future glory. No, God will leave us reminders of brokenness to serve as reminders of His grace. Endure those reminders well. Your Father loves you.
"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars." - E. H. Chapin
That's good stuff! God promises to grant us our requests in Matthew 7:7, but if the request was granted instantaneously, how quickly would it be forgotten? Or how much praise would be elliminated? Sometimes it's the waiting that sharpens us as Christians and draws us closer to Him. In adversity, He is glorified. The grace we're living in is magnified. Sometimes we just have to look to His promise in Romans 8:28 with faith while we're struggling through the valleys.
ReplyDeleteExactly. And sometimes, what we want has nothing to do with Him, so it goes as an unanswered prayer, which can be hard for us. It's gonna happen. The solace comes in knowing that evenutally, what we want becomes what He wants, and we're stronger for it.
ReplyDeleteMAN! Josh, I just want to encourage you in the fact that God uses these posts to encourage me in my "new-found-walk" with Christ ...this is sooo true! I know with out a shadow of a doubt God is going to use my multitude of failures to glorify his grace and HIS ability to soften the hardest of hearts! Keep running the race man, because you never know who you're gonna pick up along the way :D...haha
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