6.6.24

None of us like to face struggles in this life. We pour all our time and energy into minimizing those challenging circumstances that we don’t like and maximizing ways to experience happiness and pleasure. Even our prayer life is consumed with pleas for God to change our circumstances so that they are more enjoyable. And yet the irony is, we’re still never happy. Despite all this effort, we’re never fully satisfied.

And as a result, the writer to the Hebrews is reminding us that God intentionally brings or allows these unwelcome struggles for our good. - in order to rescue us. Because of our rebellion against God, our hearts will always turn toward pictures and images of the love and beauty of God - because we can control them. But a picture of something beautiful can’t make us beautiful. It can only remind us that beauty exists. An image of something secure and restful can remind us that security and rest might exist…and would be good - but it cannot give it to us.

And so God allows us - and often even leads us - into the valley of the shadow of death. He allows the natural inability of this world’s pleasures to fill us to show us the emptiness of life apart from God. In short, we’re told that God allows our lives to be constantly shaken by the struggles of this life, in order that we might come to see what is unshakable.

All of this means that when God brings circumstances into our lives that we don’t like, our first reaction should not be to run from them - or to plead with God to take them away. Our first reaction needs to be asking, “Ok, God, why did you allow this pain to enter my life and mess with my world? What are you trying to show me? What are you here to be working on in my life today?”

We miss most of the rescuing and redeeming work of God in our lives because we are too focused on pursuing our own pleasures and joys. And we foolishly believe that we know what they are and how to get them. And yet history is littered with stories of emptiness and brokenness. People’s personal ambitions have brought about oppression and murder, racism and bigotry, jealousy and bitterness. And our own stories are no better.

If we are loved as much as the Bible tells us that we are - and if God is as committed to our spiritual rescue as he tells us he is - then we can know that not one ounce of pain and struggle will enter our lives than is necessary to rescue us from foundations that are faltering. And we can be assured that God has allowed them to mess with us in order to shift the foundations of our lives from these weak and fragile imposters and on to the solid foundation of Jesus and the life he lived for us and his death that makes us secure, loved children of the King.