Right = Easy???

Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same

"All At Once", The Fray

I mean, sometimes music gets it right! And this time, I think the Fray was right on ... because I think that more often that not, right = hard. The easy button is one of our American dream ideas. Thanks, Staples for that!

 

 

But for the rest of us ... being in the center of God's will is seldom easy, comfortable ... or SAFE!  I'll confess I've quoted the old adage that the safest place to be is in the center of God's will.  But today's reading in Radical has shown me that that is truly just another invention of our trying to make God look like we'd like Him to look!  We'd LOVE to think that being in a relationship with Christ is our ticket to the good life.  We'd love to live like being in the center of His will is a free pass to health, wealth and prosperity (thanks Joel Osteen for that).  And we'd like to believe that serving Him is the surest way to win His favor and move His hand in the direction we'd like.  But, I can't find support for that in Scripture.  Yes, in the Old Testament, God's favor rested in the peoples' obedience.  But Jesus changed all of that.  I don't find support in the testimonies of believers around the world or throughout Scripture.  I don't find support in Jesus' life or His instructions to the disciples.  I was struck reading Radical last week when Platt quoted a poor, persecuted believer in another country, who, upon seeing an American TV preacher asked, "When I come to our church meetings, I look around and most of us are very poor, and we are meeting here at great risk to our lives.  Does this mean we don't have enough faith?"  WOW!  But that we had the faith of that woman.

 

What I DO see is this ...

• EVERYONE who wants to live a goldy life in Christ Jesus WILL be persecuted.
• We follow a Savior who tells us to die to self, take up our cross ... and then follow Him.
• We live in the shadow and on the shoulders of those who were martyred for their faith and for sharing that faith with the world.  They lost their comforts, wealth, families, even their lives. 
• We have to say with Paul that to live is CHRIST and to die is GAIN.  We still see death as a tragedy, not as the reward God intended it to be!
• God has sent us out into danger ... sheep among wolves.
• People that God has used greatly have often been done at great cost and with much breaking.

The place God has called us to is not likely to be EASY.  It is guaranteed to be RIGHT.  We've got to disconnect those two words in our lives to live it!