Growth

Privilege of Pain

Sanctified afflictions are spiritual promotions. – John Dod

I used to tell people that God knew I needed to have a great family. From my perspective, He knew I wasn’t one of those people who would be able to overcome bad circumstances in order to give my life to follow Him. I know that in reality that this is never possible apart from the will of the Father and His gracious provisions, still it seems that some people are better equipped to rise above the mire, to put their lives in His hands, and then to be used in mighty ways for His purposes. I didn’t think I was one of those people. It meant my testimony was never as captivating as some others’ might be, but still, I was grateful to have the relative comfort of my idyllic upbringing.

Yet, as I got older I began to realize that my assessment was only looking at half the equation. After all, God allows difficult situations for those of His children that He knows can “handle it” (or that more properly, will trust in Him to handle it.) Think about it. When you think about the heroes of the faith from both modern times and from biblical ones, they are heroes because in the midst of challenging circumstances, they persevered. God allowed them to experience pain knowing that as a result He would be more glorified. And that in glorifying Him, these individuals would accomplish what they had focused their life upon – making Christ look good.  My relative comfortable circumstances was good for life on this Earth, but it was a poor investment in my eternal home.

Luke 6:22-23 demonstrates this clearly. We are to rejoice when we suffer for Christ, because just like those who have gone before, when we suffer well for Him, we receive eternal rewards. Pain, for the Christian then, is not punishment from a vengeful God, but a responsibility granted by a concerned Dad. He knows that at some point He must give His children the responsibility of spiritual adulthood, and He knows that the responsibility might cost us. However, He also knows that in the end, it’s worth it. He’s willing to grant us the privilege of earthly pain so that we may use as a means of attaining “spiritual promotions.”

Our challenge then, is to see pain in this way. That in doing so we realize that is a privilege to be counted worthy to suffer for Him.

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Growth

Losing Weight

It’s easy to put on weight.

And not just the physical kind.

It’s easy to put on the weight that pulls us from what God wants and keeps us rooted in our own desires. This weight is unseen but potentially deadly. It’s the burden of living a life for ourselves, instead of living it in the way that we were created to live – exclusively and totally for Him.

Just like the physical weight gain, we often don’t see the slow encroachment of this increasing hindrance. Over time, we slowly put on a little weight here, and then a little weight there, until one day we hardly recognize ourselves. We consider ourselves to be an “in-shape” Christian, just like many of us still think we can run the mile like we did in high school, only to be rudely awakened from that delusion by an gradual, yet significant decline in our spiritual fitness. In our overburdened state, we’re not equipped to even run the first lap of the race, let alone run with perseverance to the end.

Sometimes we like to try to trick ourselves that the weight gain isn’t all that bad. We tell ourselves that the scale hasn’t tipped too far in one direction, it’s just the season of life that we’re in, similar to the way women the world over convince themselves that their doctor’s scale is inaccurate because they wore their shoes while they were on it.  We think we can get back in spiritual shape any time we wanted, just like we promise ourselves that after a few weeks of healthy eating we’ll be fitting into our old jeans. In both cases this is rarely true.

However, unlike physical fitness in which sliding into our favorite jeans may be our strongest motivation, Scripture gives us an even more compelling reason for taking off the weight caused by sin. Hebrews 12:1-2 says we do this because we are surrounded by “so great a cloud of witnesses”; people who have run this race and are now at the end.  In other words, we are being cheered on by the saints who have gone before – who no longer experience the encumbrance of sin, and want us, to as much as we are able to on this Earth, experience the joy that this attains. They know what it’s like to throw off the weight of sin forever, and through the lives they lived and the life that they are now living, their exhorting us to do the same.

May we press on to that aim.

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