Your Story Will Make Brave Reading!
Think back to your childhood. One evening you and a friend were lying out in your backyard in the damp green grass looking up at the starlit night and dreaming about the lives that were ahead of you. You had visions for a wonderful life, filled with health, happiness, and prosperity. You had this idyllic view of your future, one that was extremely happy, peaceful, and charming. There was no place in those dreams for cancer, unemployment, divorce, addiction, death of a spouse or child, stress of dealing with aging parents, or any of the other challenges that we all have in life. Every one of your dreams would come true, and you would live happily ever after. You remember those childhood dreams, right?
Somewhere along your journey you invited Jesus into your life and with that you thought that the difficulties and failures of your past would be a thing of the past. You listened to others who shared their story of how Jesus made their life so much better. Somewhere along the way you got the false impression that anchoring yourself to Jesus would mean smooth sailing, no more rough seas or gusty winds. NOTE: If you haven’t yet invited Jesus into your life, you can do so by admitting that you are a sinner (Psalm 32:5), asking Him for forgiveness (1 John 1:9), and then opening the door of your heart to Him (Revelation 3:19-20).
But today you look at your life and it just seems to be one new challenge piled upon top of another, and you find yourself becoming disillusioned, discouraged, frustrated, maybe even hopeless. At every turn you seem to face another detour. The dreams you had for life, well, you have stopped dreaming and right now you simply just want to hang on and ride out the current wave without taking on more water. You find yourself questioning your faith and asking, “Why me, Jesus? What did I do to deserve this?”
Jesus Himself tells us that life is full of trials and tribulations. In John 16:33 He says that “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
In 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 we read these hopeful words – “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
Martin Luther, who began the Protestant Reformation, is reported to have said these words on his deathbed – “These pains and troubles here are like the type which printers set; as they look now, we have to read them backwards and they seem to have no meaning or sense to them. But up yonder, when the Lord prints us off in the life to come, we will find they make brave reading.”
So regardless of what you feel like, or what your life looks like, God is still faithful and caring for you. He is in control and is working out your life in a way that, looking back, will all make sense one day. It will make brace reading!
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