Christian friend I ask you: what is your life like? It may seem to some we share and talk the negative more than the positive, that life is more of a struggle than it is peaches ‘n cream. (maybe ‘cuz it is!) What is your reality? Do you have a struggle with your wife, your kids, your work, your friends, your church, yourself? Anything at all? Now or ever in your past?
How do you discuss reality without being the big downer of the day? How do you have authentic fellowship without your current “misery” being the glue that binds you? I don’t make light of it at all. Our struggles, trials, temptations drive us to God. God brings and uses people in our lives to walk with us as we walk with Him. And when you come to the end of that journey, you come out stronger. Not just stronger, but closer. Closer to God and closer than a brother to those who have walked through life with you.
Jesus tells us in this life we will have struggles and trials. He tells us we will be hated for our faith. He tells us that we must daily take up a cross. He tells us to bear one another’s burdens. Why, oh why do we not do that? Why instead do we lie to the world around us and TRY to convince them that we are all fine all the time-we are all different than them because Christ has set us free and He is protecting us and He loves us and makes us happy and... All true. But we stop there. We forget to tell them about the refiner’s fire. We forget to tell them about a God who loves us too much to let us stay the way we are-just with a new title of “saved” after our name. We forget to tell them that in order to carry another’s burden, there has to be a burden. In the end times there will be a great falling away-will it be the “faithful” who fall away when God comes to do as He said He would? Will they blame us for not telling them just how much it is going to cost them to live for Christ?