Dangerous for Good, Part 1: OrientationSample

Reinterpreting Suffering

I lived a long time with a lie lodged in my heart, a wrong belief and philosophy regarding trials in my life. Let’s call trials what they really are, inconveniences, things not going the way I want them to. For many years, I believed these inconveniences were God’s way of showing me how far I had to go. I thought God was either getting even with me or punishing me with these inconveniences. I wanted a download of relief and comfort, I didn’t want to talk with God about the issues in my life, but rather wanted Him to just fix things. I wanted him to make things smoother, and easier, so I could get on with my life and not be so inconvenienced.

When you live a small story that revolves around you, it is more than easy to misinterpret God and circumstances, it is inevitable. This is what disorientation looks like and it has never been pretty in my life. I was dangerous, but not for good.

The truth is that God is not inconveniencing me. He is inviting me to participate with Him in the great mission of my life, training me for the mission, and equipping me to walk with Him in oneness, intimacy, and connectedness. Walking intimately connected with the Father is a large mission in a Larger Story. And it requires a large step of faith to know that things are not always as they seem. Just because things aren’t going well in my life doesn’t mean they aren’t going according to plan. In the stories of those in the Bible, things often got worse before they got better. The Peter in the gospels is a different man than the Peter who wrote First and Second Peter. Oh, he is the same guy—but not the same guy; he’s changed. Thirty years of walking with God will do that; it will make you different. That’s my hope—same ol’ me—but different. Too often we believe the subtle lie our enemy tells us: If something is successful, it must be of or from God. If it is not successful, then it is not from God, and something is wrong. But that is not what the stories of the Bible tell us. What looks like a horrible failure to us may be a success in God’s eyes. Was Jesus' brutal death by crucifixion a failure?

Many of the stories in the Bible would have found an editor’s trash can if the stories were meant to be a collection of human successes. The Bible is a collection of stories about God, not us. He is the center of the story, and yet we are crucial to the whole of it. Why? Because the One in the center of the story says so. It comes back to this: Do we trust the heart of the Father for us and toward us? Trials and struggles have a huge purpose and benefit in our training and maturing. This is the good that God is up to in our lives. Training us and growing us up into an image—the glorious one we had originally before sin entered the world. That image is the one He is restoring. The image we are being conformed to is that of Christ Jesus himself (Ephesians 1:11).

He showed us how to live and invites us to a life He is empowering us to live. We follow his example and overcome and become. Learning to live as He did, dangerous for good. This is the invitation of God, the one He is committed to deliver to the doorstep of our hearts, again, and again and again. Open the door, receive the gift of trials and inconvenience, and know that God is up to good in you so you can be up to good through him in a world that needs more goodness.

As you ponder all this with God today, consider asking Him:

Father, what events or circumstances have I believed to be inconvenient as opposed to an invitation to work with you, to move and enter into the struggles with you?

Jesus, how has the enemy corrupted my ability to see my life and circumstances? How is the enemy working against me to move in ways that will make me move in unloving and unkind ways?

Spirit, I long to trust you, even when it doesn't come easy. What is the good you are up to in my life? How are you inviting me to trust you in the events and circumstances unfolding in my day to day?