God Wants Our Faith, Not Our Ease

All this here. These days. These encounters. These circumstances. All of it comes through the hands of God, and all of it is engineered for our faith, not our ease. God’s goal for his own, in every circumstance, isn’t comfort, but conformity to the image of Jesus. He wants us to experience and show that Jesus is the supreme satisfaction of our souls. He wants us to know, in real life, that he is truer and better and more real than anything else. 

And the way he does this then, we should assume, isn’t by giving us every thing that every person ever wanted every time. Because he wants more for us, sometimes he gives us less. Or he makes it complicated. Or he slows us down.

We see this. We’ve known this. And still, we have such an aversion to hardship. We can’t stand difficulty. The first thing we ask when life gets hard is how to make it stop. We just want to get out. If it’s not easy, we want no part. If it’s not comfortable, we’d rather not.

But if God’s goal is our faith, not our ease, our conformity, not our comfort, then in the midst of hardship we shouldn’t panic for the exit sign. It’s there, after all, right here, where he does what he does — here in this day of confusion we so often despise. It’s here where we ask, with more fervency and sincerity than at any other time, “Sovereign Father full of grace, what are you teaching me?”