It’s human nature to accept good things with open arms. Whether it’s a compliment, a promotion, or finding out someone slipped an extra nugget in your six-piece value meal, it tends to make us feel warm and cozy, elevate our spirits, and more often than not, we find ourselves smiling for no other reason than that something good and unexpected just occurred.
Although we are not as jubilant about embracing adversity, it
too has a purpose that is well-defined and readily identified, especially in
hindsight. Hardship, adversity, trials, and testing mold character, and once
we’ve gone through it and come out the other side victorious, we are stronger
for it, with a deeper faith in the God we serve.
Even at his low point, Job had the wherewithal to acknowledge
that both good things and adversity come from the hand of God and, as such,
must be received with equal aplomb. But that just can’t be! We’re told day in
and day out that our expectations of God should extend no further than good
things, pressed down, shaken together, all the time, without fail, whether
we’re awake or sleeping. Otherwise, we’re lacking in faith or failed to make a
seed offering to our preferred televangelist.
While the modern-day church needlessly complicates some
things, it also oversimplifies others, to the point that the entirety of our
spiritual man’s succor is boiled down to a handful of overused clichés or
morning affirmations we’ve taken to repeating in the mirror. We wouldn’t want
to burden people with deeper discussions about faithfulness, obedience, or
perseverance. They’re busy people with busy lives, and if we insist they take
an extra second to consider deeper truths, they’re likely to go to the church
across the street that has an hour of praise of worship followed by a
five-minute sermon about karma.
The shepherds have failed the sheep, the church has failed
God, and what was to be an army marching through the land with healing in their
hand and everlasting joy and gladness in their hearts has been reduced to a
bunch of man-babies who whine and stomp their feet until someone comes along to
shove a pacifier in their mouth, and tell them it’s all going to be fine, and
their breakthrough is just an offering away.
You get what we have when there is a systemic failure to
preach the Gospel in any given generation by those whose sole purpose and duty
was to do just that. The whole counsel of God means even those things your
flesh is uncomfortable with, even those areas that call for the mortification
thereof, and the undeniable reality that the testing of one’s faith, whichever
way it may manifest, is not something outside the realm of possibility, or even
a probability, but a certainty.
When an entire generation has been conditioned to believe
that only good things will abound and overflow in their lives once they’ve made
a half-hearted commitment to call themselves spiritual, their immediate
reaction to any adversity is to arch their eyebrows and back away slowly
because it’s neither what they signed up for, nor what they were promised by
the guy in the three-piece suit and the Rolex on his wrist.
Job did not react in the flesh. He did not shake his fists at
the heavens or insist he didn’t deserve to go through the adversity he was
currently going through; he didn’t get bitter, angry, or vindictive because his
focus was exclusively on God, and he trusted in His sovereignty, the way a
child trusts their mother or father. He did not doubt God’s goodness and mercy,
nor did he charge Him with wrong.
We can dwell on our current situation or circumstance, and
the more we do, the bigger the problem seems to get, or we can fix our gaze
upon God and worship Him, fully confident that He knows the end from the
beginning and has made a way of escape for us.
1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you except
such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be
tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the
way of escape that you may be able to bear it.”
Although when we think of temptation, we tend to associate it
with a seduction of some kind, the broader definition of the word is the desire
to do something wrong or unwise. Yes, wanting to eat that triple-layer
chocolate cake in one sitting is a form of temptation, but so is the desire to
question the authority of God. As far as the cake is concerned, it’s an easy
fix: walk away. If you can’t walk away, throw it in the garbage. If it’s still
tempting you while sitting in the garbage can, toss some wet coffee grounds on
it, or if, perchance, you happen to have a child still in diapers, a dirty
diaper draped across it should dissuade you from digging it out.
When it comes to resisting the temptation to grow bitter or
resentful, it’s a bit more complicated because you can’t walk away from your
feelings or what’s burdening your heart. The means of escape from such
temptations requires deep, unyielding, and abiding faith in the God you serve
because it’s your faith that will be the means of escape from spiraling into despondency
and the nagging question of whether He is still with you or not.
Job knew that God was with him still, even as he sat on a
heap of ashes, scratching at his boils with a potsherd. He knew the presence of
God in the midst of his trial and was unshakeable in his resolve.
Avoiding the storm isn’t proof that God is with you. Knowing
His abiding presence in the midst of the storm is. The storms of life are
purposeful, whether to teach us dependence and reliance on Him or for the works
of God to be revealed in them.
When Jesus noticed a man who had been blind from birth, his
disciples wanted to know whether the man or his parents had sinned that he’d
been born blind. Jesus answered, saying, “Neither this man nor his parents
sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.”
Not as simple as chanting, “Money cometh unto me now,” then
again, few things in life are.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
Posted on 13 November 2024 | 11:39 am
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