In the past two weeks:
- After getting off of work one night my wife and I realized someone had decided to kick in the doors of both of our vehicles, and my best friends brand new car too...
- While leaving the mall parking lot, my wife accidentally backed into a concrete barricade and smashed up the back corner of my Expedition...
- I love to roast my own coffee, and while roasting, I completely ignored the directions and melted down my roaster...it was a big flaming, burning plastic-y mess...
- My mom, who is in advancing stages of liver failure, had a significant bleeding issue and was rushed by life flight to an ICU ward two hours from her home and seven from mine...
- While at work, I painfully rolled my ankle not once, but three times in one day at work...
Sometimes, life just sucks...
In the past couple of months I have heard of:
- A number of couples in which one spouse has just decided that they are done and they want someone else...
- A young girl who ran away from home with an arguably shady and older man, and now is in foster care away from her parents...
- A family who just had the funeral for their 18 year old daughter who was taken from them by a drunk driver...
- A lady who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer...
- A church youth worker who has made significant advances on at least two girls in the youth group he was volunteering in...
Sometimes...life...just...sucks...
In John 10, Jesus says that He came those that follow Him might have life in abundance.
In the book of Job, we are told of a man named Job. He was good. He loved God, he did right by others, he followed God's law, he was an upright man. Disturbingly we read how the adversary, the accuser (directly translated in English as Satan) comes before God, and God, for some untold reason, sends him to Job to test him. What happens next is horrific; Job loses everything. Now, when I say everything, I mean everything. If you can think of anything that Job had before:
- Family
- Children
- Livestock
- Land
- Wealth
- Homes
- Wife
- Health
- Friends
- The shirt on his back...
...he lost it. He lost it all! So what is the conclusion of all of this in the book of Job? Basically it is summed up that God can do whatever He likes, and who are we to question Him.
Seriously?
Is this the abundant life that Jesus was talking about? I mean it's one thing to say God is God. He is all powerful and all knowing and all everything and He really can do whatever He likes and we have no right whatsoever to question Him...that I get, but it's another thing altogether to call that abundant life, right?
Unless, of course, there's more to it than me being comfortable and feeling taken care of.
Like I've said before, Jesus' message was about so much more than where I end up when I die, Jesus' message had everything to do with who I am becoming in Him. Another way to say that might be to say, God is far more concerned with my character than my comfort, and He will go to unimaginable lengths to ensure me every opportunity to have my character shaped into His...no matter how painful it may be...He loves me enough to let it hurt.
Every good parent knows this pain with their own children, if I try and save my daughters from all pain and discomfort and disease and relational drama in life, I will only end up destroying them. They will become shallow and narcissistic and unempathetic and miserable.
Every good parent also knows that to allow drama and conflict and pain in the life of their child and choose not to shield them from all of it, is not the same as causing that same drama and conflict and pain. It is simply a matter of choosing not to rescue our children from every negative thing in life...and so it goes with God. Our Father, whom Jesus spent much time and energy trying to get us to see in the right light, is not the author of any kind of evil; the world manufactures plenty of that on its own. Our Father simply chooses not to always shield us from the broken world that we ourselves have all to readily partaken in too many times.
Might it be then, that Jesus' abundant life has far less to do with the ordering and fixing of our circumstances, and everything to do with developing within us the character to handle absolutely any kind of circumstance?
What then is that character?
- Love
- Joy
- Peace
- Patience
- Kindness
- Goodness
- Faithfulness
- Gentleness
- Self-Control
...otherwise known as the Fruit of the Spirit.
This then is what it comes down to, would you rather have a genie-god who takes care of all of your problems in life, or would you rather follow Jesus into a life of reformed character where you can learn to have the Fruit of the Spirit in abundance no matter your circumstances?
Maybe then, life wouldn't have to suck after all...
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