Would you rather have an easy life but with a distant God or a
hard life but with an intimate, comforting God?
I think that those who cling to safety and dislike challenges
might prefer the first. But one can only realize how much more blessed you are
when you face the second when you realize how much fuller life is when you let
God surround your life.
It takes strength to be willing to step out of your comfort
zone and face possible messes but there is a reason why achievement is
pleasurable and the idea of victory after long hard work is appealing. I think
God designed us to not simply ride an easy way and be fully content, but to
need to grow and become fuller and enriched in ourselves. He also designed it
so that could only be achieved through work and some bumps along the way.
Free will. Life might be easier if we had not been given
free will by God. But He loved us so much (tough love maybe) that He provided
us with it. Now we have to make choices, hard ones. But we are empowered as we
choose to become more like Him and more like who He designed us to be.
You don’t build up physical muscles and strength easily. It
takes a little pain at first as you lift those weights and work out the
muscles. You don’t learn to walk without falling down a few times first. Some
things certain people find challenging where other things they don’t. But God
still places those certain challenges for us in our lives to mold and stretch
us. To build our muscles and strength, but not beyond what we can handle. Our
Coach knows our limit, even when we think He doesn’t.
Really these challenges are a gift then. He is only empowering
us rather than trying to defeat or weaken us.
Hebrews 12:10b-11 “but God disciplines us for our good, in
order that we may share in His holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the
time but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and
peace by those who have been trained by it.”
The easier road would make us apathetic and static. It would
give us the resistance to understanding the need for a Savior. It would keep us
where we were and not enrich us any further. Imagine if it were easy to learn
to walk without falling down? We would not appreciate the achievement and
discipline it took to walk. Walking would seem ordinary and just another thing
acquired. No true satisfaction and appreciation.
With a distant God, our lives could never know how far we could
be stretched. How much power and might and wisdom there is to be attained and
offered. We would never know true beauty and holiness. Or we might know if it
but would have no way of knowing how to attain it. It’s that offering of
perfection that is so wonderful but the Holder of perfection not giving us any
way to it.
With the hard road, it is easy to be defeated at the hardest
point and even wonder what it is all for. Indeed notice that in the quote from
Hebrews, it doesn’t say simply: “it produces a harvest of righteousness and
peace.” It ends with “by those who have been trained by it.” Simple endurance but no effort to be empowered or
trained by a hardship does not add up to anything. One can fall down and get
hurt but unless you learn from how to then overcome and not fall down again;
unless you didn’t look back and observe and try to learn, but simply fell down,
what would you have gained? You will keep falling down because you do not think
or look ahead to try and match the person who is already walking. Your harvest
comes after training.
But the awesome part is that our God is intimately there to
be our role model, trainer and comforter. Really to serve every need we could
ever have and to fulfill it.
Job 5:17-18 “Behold how happy is the man whom God reproves.
So do not despise the discipline of the Almighty, for He inflicts pain and
gives relief; He wounds and His hands also heal.”
God is the reason hardship is worth it. Because we can be
like Him. Because He is right there. Because there is more than just a static
state of easiness. Because there is someone right there when you most need
someone to give you relief.
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