"...and we rejoice in our suffering because we know the easy answers that allow us to forego tough times and get right to a maturity and abundance and excitement that transcends the process of growth"
...okay, maybe that's not quite how the verse goes, but I'd like it a lot better my way! (compare to Romans 5:3-5)
As the rain is pouring down this morning, I realize it lands on two people today: those it refreshes and those it depresses.
My own strife - of stolen credit cards, lacking finances, strained relationships, and a hurting body - pail in comparison to others I care about this week.
It's almost impossible for me right now to share the grief with you on this page... I'm broken hearted for the broken hearted! People I'm close to feel rejected, insignificant, anxious, unsupported, listless, lonely, hopeless, unheard, isolated, and just plain blah.
Some have given up on Christ as Life because life doesn't look any easier that way. Another runs from friends in the Church because she anticipates their rejection. Another seeks out the advice she wants to hear and rejects everyone else's intervention so she might feel justified in her decisions. Another feels he's irrevocably recked his life by his behavior and may not see it disentangled again. Most recently, a dear friend struggles with an unidentifiable melancholy, wanting everything to be what it ought to be, but not sure what that even means right now.
So - people I love are hurting, lonely, lost and desperate. ...and I am not the solution. Not even a little.
My friends, if you are flailing, I love you dearly, but God is your Source. I might be available for Him to use (as I hope you are for others in your life), but it cannot be mine to fix.
I would love to help, but He is your help. Maybe He will use me, and maybe He won't, but I'm not the solution, and - most likely - the problem isn't what you think it is, either.
Here's a little prescription for reorienting things when nothing seems to be as it should in your world, but you're not going to like it (at first):
1) You probably feel like you're missing something or being hurt by someone. The problem, however is not what someone has done, what you lack, or what you need done. The problem is the flesh. Once we realize that the only obstacle to the fullness of Life God promises is my trying to meet my own needs, justify my behavior, justify how others should behave differently, or somehow create change in my circumstance - once I embrace the reality of the flesh in me - I can begin to understand what God's up to in my time of suffering and struggle. As long as I am trying to be my own source, the flesh and all it's twisted and deceptive desires will reign and I will be experiencing death. So there it is - regardless how you feel, the problem is the flesh. His joy and abundance is not based on circumstance, behavior, or perception, but dependence on God as your Source.
2) Then naturally the solution to your flesh is not always what we want to hear either. Getting the date, the job, the recognition, the change, the finances, the marriage, the furniture, or the opportunity will not meet your need. Getting married, getting divorced, eating more, eating less, working harder, not working at all - all these are powerless to produce what you're needing in your life... Not even a little. The solution is trusting God as your Source. Don't perform. Don't bargain. Don't persuade. Just receive. The problem is we want what we want like a druggie needs another hit - our flesh craves more of what it needs to justify itself. We don't just want what we want, but we want to be right to want it! That's the self-justifying work of the flesh. Trusting Christ instead of trying to achieve or justify is the only path to experiencing Life. That's life with a capital "L".
Everything else is a knockoff and will fall apart in the rain.
There's a passage that's dear to me, one I turn to frequently to be reminded of the sufficiency of Christ as my Life. In fact, it's so personal, so intimate a voice Father uses to speak these words to my heart, it is challenging to share, but they are too powerful NOT to share. Jeremiah was having a really tough time. He was doing what God asked, and life was getting harder and harder. It didn't seem fair and it was emotionally exhausting. He was speaking to folks having a really tough time, too - Israelites cast under the shadow of their enemies, feeling rejected by God, the mockery of their peers, having what little they had taken from them, and generally lacking any hope in life at all. And into Jeremiah's heart and the Israelites ears, God spoke...
"Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord. He will be like a bush in the wastelands. He will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
(Can anyone relate to that? Feel like your life is that of a scraggly bush in the desert? Listen to your Father's desire for you in the next verse...)
"...But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends it's roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit."
Don't be condemned, my friends, and don't feel rebuked... Be refreshed! Be renewed in the power of His love. Be energized by the sufficiency of the Spring of Life that will flow out from you as you imbibe His Life.
Come to Him now even more completely and receive rest for your weary soul. Seek Him alone today and watch His life flow through your members. Determine to need and know nothing but Christ and see the fruit - for you and for others around you - that He alone can and will produce. What will He withhold who gave completely of Himself? What do you lack that compares to what He wants to provide for you?
Let Him uproot you from the lacking strife of the flesh, and He will replant you by the Stream of Living Water anew that you may drink deeply from His sufficient grace today.
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