The Bible is clear that God disciplines the children that He loves so that we will become holy like Him. God sends hardships, challenges, difficulties, and suffering because He is our perfect and loving Father who knows our frames, and He knows exactly what we need. Since we belong to Jesus, we must receive all our trials and challenges with thanksgiving, trusting Him as the perfect coach, the perfect artist, the perfect contractor. He knows what needs to change in us. He knows what needs to go. And most importantly, He knows what we must become.
The Bible is clear that the glory that God has planned for His people is far beyond what we can even imagine. C.S. Lewis says somewhere that many people become Christians and think that growing in holiness means that God is going to make a few minor cosmetic changes to our life, maybe like painting our little cottage a different color or putting some different flooring down. But when God starts working, it’s nothing like we expected and it’s far more radical and painful. He starts knocking down walls and takes the whole roof off. But that’s because God isn’t just giving our squatty little bungalow a minor upgrade. No, God is determined to remodel us into enormous royal mansions that He can dwell in.
So this is the point: those challenges with your husband, with your wife, with your children, with your parents, with your siblings, with your roommates, with your coworkers, with your health, with your finances, with your job – all of those hardships and trials are God’s good work in you. He intends to take away all our sin, and that means that a bunch of you has to go, a bunch of your personality, a bunch of your preferences, a bunch of your assumptions need to get knocked down and taken to the dump. Jesus says that the only way to find your life is to lose it. The only way to find who you really are is to let Jesus change you. And this means receiving the challenges He sends with thanksgiving as His good work in You.
So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.
Photo by Josh Olalde on Unsplash
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