Tag: difficulty

Categories
Christian Living

I Became a Christian and All My Problems Vanished!

“I Became a Christian and All My Problems Vanished!”
…ummm, I Don’t Believe You.

In fact, “I don’t believe you” is too mild a statement, but I didn’t want to offend you by writing what I really think about this statement. “I became a Christian, and now I don’t have anymore problems,” let’s just say that a person who says this or believes that it will come true is someone who is either a deceiver or deceived. Some who say it are lying because they think that is what they are supposed to say. Others believe it will come true because they have bought into the lie.

Does the Bible give us assurances that Jesus will walk with us through difficult times? Yes.
Does the Bible promise us that once we become Christians we will no longer have difficult times? Absolutely not.

In fact, Jesus says just the opposite – that trials and difficulties and persecutions will come, and that some of these will come directly as a result of following Him. So to say that becoming a Christian will make life easy is to attack the truthfulness of God’s own words.

Taking up one’s cross daily is difficult.
Engaging in spiritual warfare with the enemy is difficult.
Dealing with real persecution because of faith is difficult.

      …great assurances are scriptural and true—praise God, they are!
      But it is possible so to stress them, and so to play down the rougher side of the Christian life—the daily chastening, the endless war with sin and Satan, the periodic walk in darkness—as to give the impression that normal Christian living is a perfect bed of roses, a state of affairs in which everything in the garden is lovely all the time, and problems no longer exist—or, if they come, they have only to be taken to the throne of grace, and they will melt away at once.
      This is to suggest that the world, the flesh, and the devil will give us no serious trouble once we are Christians; nor will our circumstances and personal relationships ever be a problem to us; nor will we ever be a problem to ourselves. Such suggestions are mischievous, however, because they are false.
      Of course, an equally lopsided impression can be given the other way. You can so stress the rough side of the Christian life, and so play down the bright side, as to give the impression that Christian living is for the most part grievous and gloomy—hell on earth, in hope of heaven here-after! No doubt this impression has from time to time been given; no doubt the ministry we are examining here is partly a reaction against it. But it must be said that of these two extremes of error, the first is the worse, just to the extent that false hopes are a greater evil than false fears.
      The second error will, in the mercy of God, lead only to the pleasant surprise of finding that Christians have joy as well as sorrow. But the first, which pictures the normal Christian life as trouble-free, is bound to lead sooner or later to bitter disillusionment.

Life is difficult for everyone.
Life with Jesus makes for the best possible situation in this difficult life.
Life with Jesus, even though it brings in new difficulties, allows us to find His strength in the midst of the dark spots.
That is why Paul can say… Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

The Christian life is full of joy because of Jesus. But let us never deceive others by telling them the Christian life is trouble-free, because we never want someone to become disillusioned about Jesus because of us.


        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)


Categories
Christian Living

I Am Following God, But Life Is Still Tough. What Gives?

a dark tunnel symbolizing the tough passages that God might lead us through
I wish there were simple answers to all of life’s tough questions, but we often find that many of our questions cannot be packaged into a box that is easily and neatly tied up. This is a question that is difficult. What we discover in our lives is that as we strive to follow God we have this sense that life should get easier, but our experience is that many times life gets even harder. This leads to us questioning if God is mad at us or if we have misunderstood God’s leading:

      Here is another cause of deep perplexity for Christian people…. They have set off along the road which God seemed to indicate. And now, as a direct result, they have run into a crop of new problems which otherwise would not have arisen—isolation, criticism, abandonment by their friends, practical frustrations of all sorts. At once they grow anxious. …Is their own present experience of the rough side of life (they ask themselves) a sign from God that they are themselves like Jonah, off track, following the path of self-will rather than the way of God?
      It may be so, and the wise person will take occasion from his new troubles to check his original guidance very carefully. Trouble should always be treated as a call to consider one’s ways. But trouble is not necessarily a sign of being off track at all…[as the Bible] teaches in particular that following God’s guidance regularly leads to upsets and distresses which one would otherwise have escaped. Examples abound.
God guided Israel by means of a fiery and cloudy pillar that went before them; yet the way by which he led them involved the nerve-shredding cliffhanger of the Red Sea crossing….
      Jesus’ disciples were twice caught by night in bad weather on the Sea of Galilee, and both times the reason why they were there was the command of Jesus himself.
      [Paul] told the Ephesian elders whom he met on his way, “I am going to Jerusalem, bound in the Spirit, not knowing what shall befall me there; except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.” So it proved to be: Paul found trouble on the grand scale through following divine guidance.
      …For a final example and proof of the truth that following God’s guidance brings trouble, look at the life of the Lord Jesus himself. No human life has ever been so completely guided by God, and no human being has ever qualified so comprehensively for the description “a man of sorrows.” Divine guidance set Jesus at a distance from his family and fellow townsmen, brought him into conflict with all the nation’s leaders, religious and civil, and led finally to betrayal, arrest and the cross.
      …By every human standard of reckoning, the cross was a waste—the waste of a young life, a prophet’s influence, a leader’s potential. We know the secret of its meaning and achievement only from God’s own statements. Similarly, the Christian’s guided life may appear as a waste—as with Paul, spending years in prison because he followed God’s guidance to Jerusalem, when he might otherwise have been evangelizing Europe the whole time. Nor does God always tell us the why and wherefore of the frustrations and losses which are part and parcel of the guided life.
      Sooner or later, God’s guidance, which brings us out of darkness into light, will also bring us out of light into darkness. It is part of the way of the cross.

But thankfully, what I have found in my own experience is that even though I might be taken to difficult places by the guiding hand of God, the great news is that He not only holds my hand taken me to there, but he also never lets go as He leads me through them.

And there is a purpose for me going through it, even if I don’t understand it right now. I just have to trust Him even when I can’t see the end result.

I also need to remember that the purpose may not be about me, but rather about building up His kingdom. Since I have pledged my life to be His servant and to build His kingdom, then even if my life is crushed in the process, I am to be willing to be crushed for His sake.

I agree with the words of a song: “I’d rather walk in the dark with Jesus, than to walk in the light of my own. I’d rather go through the valley of the shadow with Him, than to dance on the mountains alone.” The Christian life is tough. It is not for the weak… it is for the courageous. It is for those with the courage to follow God even when the path isn’t clear and even when the road is rough.


        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer, and from Wayne Watson’s song: Walk in the Dark)


Categories
Relationships

Living Everyday In the Intensive Care Waiting Room

Many of us have had to spend time in an Intensive Care Waiting Room.

Knowing a loved one is behind those closed doors fighting for life.

Waiting with expectation for each of those 15-minute visits when the hospital staff opens the doors to let us see our loved one for a brief moment.

icu waiting room sign with hours of visiting posted

A pastor wrote about the ICU waiting room:

I have spent long hours in the hospital intensive care unit… watching with anguished people… listening to urgent questions: Will my husband make it? Will my child walk again? How can I live without my companion of thirty years?”

The intensive care waiting room is different from any other place in the world. And the people who wait are different. They can’t do enough for each other. No one is rude. The distinctions that divide people in society melt away. A person is a father first, and any other distinctions are less important. The man without a job loves his wife as much as the successful business owner loves his, and everyone understands this. Each person pulls for everyone else.

In the intensive care waiting room, the world changes. Vanity and pretense vanish. The universe is focused on the doctor’s next report. If only it will show improvement. Everyone knows that loving someone else is what life is all about.

Could we learn to love like that if we realized that every day of life is a day in the waiting room?

Life is like the Intensive Care Waiting Room, and yet we often fail to remember this. Life is full of struggle and pain and difficulty. But instead of an illness or injury that has us struggling for physical life, our real struggle is one of the spirit. Temptations and sin pour into our lives leading to worry and anxiety that chokes out our ability to breathe. And yet, we fail to realize that every one of us walking this planet are struggling in much the same way.

Therefore everyone needs to pull for everyone else.

Loving others is what life is all about. Let’s stop being divisive over secondary matters. Let those less important things melt away. Let someone know that you love them and are pulling for them today.