since i have been done with school, which has only been a week by the way, i have found myself thinking a lot more. which i am loving. i am only having to focus on ministry things. which is amazing. but going through this book right now by these two teen aged kids, has brought me to some cool conclusions.
when we decide to follow God's way of life that He has planned for us, we are to grow. at that point we are declaring war on our sin and this idea fights against us doing the harder things because our natural, sinful nature is to go for the easy way out. Jonathan Edwards, a great American theologian, once wrote: “The way to Heaven is ascending; we must be content to travel uphill, though it be hard and tiresome, and contrary to the natural bias of our flesh.” not going the easy way out is the harder thing to do, its natural for us to do so. that's why its a fight to go against that.
in Romans 7:21-25, Paul notices this idea about his nature and the war that wages inside him to obey God:
- 21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
The Bible alone gives us the real explanation about our tendency to take the path of least resistance, even though doing hard things is in our best interest.
let's look at it this way. if we lived in a land where the law rewarded you for doing the harder thing. where you were rewarded for your hard work and anyone can advance in life or their carer if they took to caring to applying themselves. you would think that the one who made this a law would be a wise ruler. if the people of this land choose not to do this, and not work hard, you wouldn't say that ruler was not a good leader would you? no way. truthfully, we are so eager to avoid doing the tough things, even though we all know that doing those things and putting effort into those hard situations is the way we can grow closer to God, means that there is a great Creator and then the fallen people...us.
God’s design is good, but it has been corrupted by our sin. We were made to grow through effort. The corruption of our nature is laziness. What better way to undermine God’s plan for us than to make us avoid His means for growth?
Writes C.S. Lewis: “It is hard; but the sort of compromise we’re hankering after is harder—in fact, it is impossible… We are like eggs at present. And we cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”
we can’t just go on being ordinary, decent Christians, giving God part of our lives while holding back the rest. Either we are hatched and learn to fly or we are a dud that will soon start to stink. The ironic thing here is that although the hardest thing — the almost impossible thing — is to hand over our whole selves to Christ, it is far easier than what we are trying to do instead.
We can’t really avoid doing hard things. We can only decide when to do them and how prepared we will be to handle the hard things life brings our way. You either do the hard thing of getting prepared, or you deal with the harder thing of being unprepared. We either “do it” now, or we end up having to “deal with it” later.
crazy how that works out huh?
Random Fact: There are more TV sets in an average U.S. household than there are people.
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