While we are experiencing pain and loss in areas of our lives, we can still experience joy in our relationship with God.
- Think about the trials you have encountered in life. What have you learned from them? How have you been strengthened through them?
- If you value the development of Christian character in your life, then you will be able to endure trials with this godly purpose in mind.
- It doesn’t necessarily decrease the pain you may experience in the midst of the trial, but it will give you perspective.
- It will allow you to see beyond the immediate pain and to find joy and solace in God.
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance…so that you may be mature and complete”
(James 1:4)
Whatever the source of difficulty in our lives, God is committed to doing something good in each of us.
- He is committed to cultivating growth in our lives. If we understand this, we will be able to endure the times of testing, but if we lose sight of God’s good intent, the difficulties in life will drag us down and we will resist God’s purpose.
Do we really believe that there is nothing more valuable or pleasurable in this life than knowing God?
- Will we take seriously our responsibility to value and maintain our relationship with God?
- Or will we neglect the relationship and choose to forget God?
- How are you responding to this test right now in your life?
We all struggle with doubt. In fact, honest doubts and questions reveal faith’s presence in our hearts, not its absence. But what we do with our doubts is critical.
Why do we sin?
- When we sin, we challenge God’s authority and put ourselves on the throne. We disbelieve in God’s goodness. We assert that we know what is best for ourselves.
- Sin is an act of defiance against God. When we sin, we are choosing a pleasure or a course of action of our own design instead of that which God intends for us; we’re placing ourselves and our wants above him.
- Of course, part of the pain of disobedience comes when we realize that we have chosen a lesser pleasure or a less fruitful – perhaps even destructive – course of action. We have forfeited what is best.
- Why would we ever choose something less than what is most valuable and, in the end, most pleasurable? Because we do not see things clearly. Our faculties and impaired. Our souls and minds and hearts are completely darkened by a sinful nature. We are diseased, terminally. We are wounded, fatally. We are lost, eternally.
Re-source: Redemption
the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil
Ultimately, it is in Christ that we are able to experience all the good that God has intended for us.
- “Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:5).
- Through this adoption we have the inheritance and all the rights that come from being children of God.
“In Christ” is a description of intimate association. As Christians we are not primarily in a religion, or in a teaching, or in a state of mind – we are in a Person. We are invited to lose ourselves in this relationship.
- Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). Being found “in Christ” requires radical self-denial and surrender.
- However, the very next verse affirms that it is actually in denying ourselves for Christ that we discover ourselves in Christ: “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:35).
We must learn to come before God regularly with a simple prayer, “God, give me a revelation of who you are today.”
- We should pray this not only for ourselves but for others as well because nothing else will change our lives more than a deeper knowledge of God.
- The more we pray this prayer, the more we will desire to experience it.
- It will become our passion to know God, and the more we know him, the more we will yearn for more of him.
We have an amazing treasure in the opportunity to know God personally.
- Truly, there is nothing more beautiful, noting more wonderful, nothing more extravagant that our hearts could desire.
- This is precisely what the apostle Paul was captivated by when he wrote, “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3:8).
If we are to enjoy and cherish a relationship with God, we must believe in not only God’s existence but also his character, that he is good and that he desires to grant us an experience of that goodness.
craving and resource from “A Beautiful Way” – An Invitation to a Jesus-Centered Life by Dan Baumann with Mark Klassen
