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“Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.” Hebrews 5:8
One of the lies Satan has been feeding us for years is that God is an angry, vindictive God who wants to destroy us. Nothing is farther from the truth. God is holy to be sure, and because he is holy he can’t allow sin to be in his children.
God is also the loving parent. A loving parent guides their children on the right path. When they stray, they are redirected. As they grow older, they choose the way that was shown them.
But growing is hard. We make bad choices. Friends abandon us. Dreams are crushed. What we hope for vanishes. But it’s the painful things in life that make us strong.
Even Jesus learned to obey through the power of the same Holy Spirit that indwells each of us as his followers.
When you encounter difficulty ask your Heavenly Father to give you wisdom. Is this a redirection or is this a pruning? Both are painful. One requires action on your part (confession/repentance), the other requires action on God’s part ( the vine dresser in John 15). During pruning our part is to rest knowing his way is best.
Your Heavenly Father loves you unconditionally and with no limit. What you are going through may not be understood now, but it is not without purpose and is under the watchful eye of a loving parent.
“Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ” Philippians 3:8
What is the most important thing in your life? Generally speaking, the thing that is the most important in our life is what we gain our identity from.
For some of us we would say that our most important thing is our children. For others it may be our career. For others it may be our social action activity. Still others may look at the future and may say the most important thing now is to prepare for the future by building a nest egg for our kids for college and for our retirement.
It’s important to realize that none of those things are bad things in anyway. The things that we have in this life are important. But the most important things are we what we are laying up for ourselves in eternity. Each of us will face eternity whether we believe in it or not. The important question is “how are we preparing for eternity?”
The apostle Paul put all of these things, relationships, finances, family, and careers in the same category as garbage! It isn’t that he doesn’t think they are important, he has just come to the realization in his life that the most important thing to him is his faith in Jesus Christ. Everything else may fall away but our faith will remain strong through every circumstance.
The fight for power, rights and control is never more evident than it is today. This fight is driven by emptiness, pain, and hatred. It shows itself in anger. There will be no peace this side of Heaven.
There will be no contentment until we grow deeper in Jesus. The deeper we go the more peace we gain. It’s much like mining for diamonds. We can stop in shallowness and enjoy the a few low quality diamonds or dig deep and get the best ones. The best diamonds are deeper and get better the deeper we go. Grow deep! Reap the best God has for you.
