Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: JOURNEY (01/13/22)
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TITLE: Becoming Refined Along The Way | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ken Grant
01/20/22 -
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Life is hard. The daily challenges that we confront will necessarily cause us either to shrink back in fear or move forward in faith. Moving forward is not a reflection of the absence of fear, but the sure belief that striding out into the fray is worth the potential pain and loss that may result. Jesus never promised us an easy life, but one filled with purpose just as he had. His life ended in death, but death was not the end. His resurrection is put forth as a promise that we will live forever with him and that existence will be free of the sin and death which surrounds us now.
In his second letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul discussed the weight of persecution that he had endured and the damage it had done to him physically, emotionally, and spiritually. But, rather than despairing, he focused instead on how God used such challenges to form him into the person that God had created him to be. Paul could think back to God showing him how much he must suffer for the name of Jesus. Being selected by God to declare his purposes in this world will always come with a cost, but the reward is that much greater.
The last couple of years have involved much suffering for many and it has caused a number of those I know to question why God would allow them to go through such pain. I have witnessed a real lack in what I refer to as a theology of suffering. As Christians in places of significant wealth, we have been spared a great deal of pain that those in many parts of the world consider normal. While we often speak of this as blessing, the Bible often sees it in a different light. Paul wrote in his second letter to Timothy, near the end of his life, that all who desire to live godly lives in Christ would endure persecution.
Jesus came to bring us joy for our life’s journey, but it is the presence of God within us that enables us to live life to the full. It is not the absence of pain, but the peace that comes from abiding in Christ that enables us to prosper along the way. It is the challenges of daily existence that God uses to form us little by little into the people that God created us to be. He refines us as we struggle, identifying those areas of our lives that are lacking, and makes us more like Christ every day until ultimately we reach the destination that, unlike what Ralph Waldo Emerson believed, is the hope of every follower of Jesus, the awesome presence of God.
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We do indeed live in a broken world, but, as you say we walk with Him - never left to face things alone.
It has taken quite a few years for me to comprehend that. I, being a ‘do all to rescue first- think later’ did not initially credit the Omniscient One with greater intelligence, greater ways- greater everything🤔.
Now I do -100%.
Loved your entry.
Yet, personally, I value and view the incremental daily change process as an already presence of God destination. This maybe the same state Emerson values, yet an unconscious recognition of living in the presence of God, by Emerson.
Congratulations upon a job excellently done! Not only a splendid teaching but also a great Devotional.