Is It Worth All the Trouble?
Do you wonder what God is doing? Life is pretty difficult for everyone, and even Christians don’t know all the answers. When God leads us through shadowy valleys, they still have shadows. But even though we don’t see the big picture, the cool thing is that He does! The “big picture” is all made by a process: God’s process. In fact, God created process.
God created process for a reason. He even went through a process himself: Jesus didn’t just run to the cross, fling himself on it, and die. There was a process He had to go through. He had to see what it was like to be in our shoes. He had to feel our pain, know what we go through, and experience death. He was to be our perfect example – but it took a process.
We go through processes, too. Our lives are processes. We have to go through different situations to learn what God’s plan is. God can’t just poof us to the end of our current circumstances to make us comfortable. We have to go through the process He has us in to learn what life is like. There are different lessons to learn on the way to the final lesson God wants you to learn.
No, our lessons aren’t comfortable all the time, and no, we may not want to go through them, but it is necessary. I know multiple families from the church I attend are finding this principle to be true. Some of them have gone through sickness, financial difficulties, and loss on massive scales. But it’s a process. God is teaching us to rely completely on him. he’s teaching us to fall back on his promises and to trust Him completely.
Trust is not the easiest thing to do in that situation, but that’s part of the process. Experiences change you. They shape you and the way you think. God has plans for you and I, and those plans will change who we are forever. God isn’t bringing you through a process for no reason. He’s teaching you and making you better along the way! Let Him take you through the process you’re experiencing right now. You will be glad in the end that you did.
Does God have you in process right now? Have experiences shaped your life in ways that seemed unfair at first, but ended up preparing you to help others? Share some encouragement or just discuss the processes you see right now in the comments.
It always seems unfair to let God shape our lives! He’ll even do things “stealth:” sometimes He’ll remind you of something you thought you’d never deal with, and then a little while later you’ll have to make that choice you thought you’d have an easy time making.
Almost seems like He’s not playing fair, because now you *know* you know the right thing to do, and you know that He knows you know the right thing to do, and He still won’t force you to make the right decision. You’ll just have to live with yourself if you don’t. (And you’ll probably have to repent.)
Even so, situations like that have saved me grief later on. It feels like a trap sometimes when you’re in a process you didn’t design – maybe it is, in a way – but the truth is that God tells us what the outcome is beforehand:
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” -Jeremiah 29:11 TLB
Good insights. It helps to understand those things when we’re in the middle of a process. That first-hand experience is so powerful, because to know (intellectually) about processes and to go through processes are two very different things. When we go through them, we come out as experienced soldiers. The experience does a deep, lasting work that mere understanding cannot do.
Real life Christianity is a challenge, but it is also very powerful. I’m glad there are young people who are willing to take the challenge and live a “risky” life of faith, rather than a life of “trendy” Christianity.
Stay faithful to the process. the purest of Gold is on the other side of the fire and after several attempts at refining, the heat is always turned up each time to achieve an even greater cleansing. Rejoice and be exceeding glad for the master knows exactly which temperature your furnace can handle and the result he is looking for in you is attainable.