I do a lot of thinking when I am doing chores around the house. I have some real unspoken chats with God while folding laundry or unloading and reloading the dishwasher. This morning’s revelation had to do with my attitude toward adversity. Born and raised on the edges of a bustling and somewhat unstable Eastern City, I toughened up a little too much. I developed a ‘suck it up and move on,” way of living and thinking about life. When it came to fight of flight, I was on both ends, either running away or fighting, usually the former, because the gal was usually bigger than I was. No one would know this by looking at me, I mean, I think I look fairly Middle-class now. But that was not my beginnings. As I pondered my tendency to “take it as it comes, roll with the punches,” and of course, “suck it up and move on;” God seemed to whisper to me. That whisper spoke so kindly and said, “How about taking Life as I come?”
Hmmmmmm, taking Life as He comes, as sovereignly from the hand of the God who loves me, who sought me out while I sat staring at stained glass windows and Stations of the Cross. To take Life from His hands as the One who formed me in my mother’s womb and knew every word I would ever speak before I spoke it (Psalm 139). Imagine receiving my everyday happenings as, not random and nonsensical things that just happen to me, but as drippings from the Honey-pot of God. Even the hard stuff, the tear-jerking moments, the painful stabs from my fellow humans. Can I embrace those prickly moments, the bloody nosed rags as from God’s hands? Not all things come from God, but He is Sovereign over all and He makes some pretty amazing promises in His Word to me, like:
17 For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. 18 So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
(2 Cor. 4:17-18 HCSB)?
No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to humanity. God is faithful, and He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation He will also provide a way of escape so that you are able to bear it.
(1 Cor. 10:13)
28 We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose. 29 For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those He predestined, He also called; and those He called, He also justified; and those He justified, He also glorified.
(Romans 8:28-30)
And one of the most beautiful and encouraging verses ever penned by God:
I am sure of this, that He who started agoodwork in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Phil. 1:6)
So take heart, Dear Fellow-Believer. Our God is mightily at work within us, through adversity, struggle and failure; but also, through blessings and His own loving Sovereignty. Join me in learning to take life as He comes and see all things as trickling through His loving and caring fingers. One of His most overlooked promises is that In this world you will have trouble, but the rest of the verse is priceless.
These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation but take courage; I have overcome the world.”
(John 16:33 NASB)
