When You Find Yourself
One of the hardest lessons I have learned in my Christian life is that life gets more challenging when we obey God. For some reason, no one taught me this in Sunday school or youth group. As a teenager, I obeyed God when he directed me to affirm my family’s call to leave my hometown and move to Florida. But then I resented him when it was hard, and I was miserable.
No one prepared me for the struggles that obedience can create in my discipleship process. (If they didn’t, it fell on deaf ears.) Why? Because it’s a bad sales pitch. “Come be a Christian! God will direct you and make your life harder!”
Reality is challenging when we’re serving God and living as witnesses for him, the world pushes against us, and the evil one tries to discourage us. That often puts us in a tough spot. God gives us the strength and resilience to stay the course as long as we rely on him.
Peter explains this when he says in his first letter:
No one prepared me for the struggles that obedience can create in my discipleship process. (If they didn’t, it fell on deaf ears.) Why? Because it’s a bad sales pitch. “Come be a Christian! God will direct you and make your life harder!”
Reality is challenging when we’re serving God and living as witnesses for him, the world pushes against us, and the evil one tries to discourage us. That often puts us in a tough spot. God gives us the strength and resilience to stay the course as long as we rely on him.
Peter explains this when he says in his first letter:
“Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you.” – 1 Peter 4:12 NLT
Reflect on a time you’ve had a trial in your life. Please spend some time thinking about it today. We often go back to our hard times and reflect as much as we should, but these times in our lives form us the most.
Reflect on a time you’ve had a trial in your life. Please spend some time thinking about it today. We often go back to our hard times and reflect as much as we should, but these times in our lives form us the most.
“The first step toward “parted waters” is to frequently remind ourselves that the Lord has either put us in this difficult place or has allowed us to be there for reasons perhaps only He knows.“ –The Red Sea Rules, by Robert J. Morgan (Rule 1)
Questions to Ponder:
- What spiritual lessons have you learned from struggles?
- Is your tendency to pull closer to God or become more independent?
- What would it be if you could give your younger self a word of advice?
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