How often do we face hard circumstances we wouldn’t have chosen and shake our fist at the air with dejection or defiance? How often do we view hardship as an inconvenience and a setback or even worse a rejection from our maker? But what if the very situations we despise are vehicles for our good and maturity? The Bible tells us that the goal of the Christian is to reach maturity and to bear the fruit of it not to just find comfort or relief. We’re all in this process. We are all constrained by some type of limitation that our season hasn’t yet evaded; something that is meant to mature us. We are all in line for the transition. As we wait in the queues of life, do we waste what amounts to the majority of our lives in defiance of what God is actively doing on our behalf? Do we kick against the goads meant to steer us in the direction of maturity? Do we misuse what’s meant to mature us by letting it harm us instead?
I asked the Holy Spirit what He wanted me to know about this season I’m in. I heard: “Rest and be healed. Don’t allow what I’ve meant to heal you become what harms you.” What if what you’re walking through…the setback, the disappointment, the diagnoses…is a threshold to a greater maturity, a profound inner healing? Would it change how you responded? Would it change how you speak to the person on the other side of the phone, the cashier, the doctor, your child, your spouse? Would it change how you lived? Would it change how you dream? Would it change how you think? I hope so. I hope it’s changing me.
God is most interested in what is happening inside of us, but we’re so often set on being stuck in the sinking sand of what’s happening to us. He’s constantly throwing a lifeline of healing and we’re too busy sinking to rest in His safety. Life hurts and as a result there will always be a tender place in each of us that needs the Healer’s touch. Can we rest in the difficulty, the unknown, the struggle long enough for Him to heal? Can we stop our sinking long enough to see the rope hanging within our reach?
Do we really believe that no weapon formed against us will prosper? Do we really believe that these present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us? Do we really believe that He is working things for our good? Do we believe that words of life cannot be found apart from our God? If we do, we must set our minds like flint and stay out of the quick sand of how we feel and what we want. We must choose maturity, but we don’t get to choose how it comes.