Tedashii - Below ParadiseSample

Below Paradise

In John 16:21 Jesus gives His disciples hard truths as He prepares them for the soon betrayal, arrest, and death He will face. These truths are accompanied by encouragements, but let’s take time now to sit in the sobering truth He shares.

He acknowledges their sorrow. He validates it. He doesn’t tell them they’re wrong. He doesn’t tell them their pain doesn’t hurt. He uses the picture of a laboring woman to illustrate his point. I will never labor, obviously. But I have been in the room and witnessed my wife labor without drugs with each of our three sons. How insane would one be to look upon her discomfort and tell her “it’s not that bad, just put a smile on your face"? In the same way, we need to accept our reality. We need to acknowledge the pain and sorrow we’ll experience here, just as Jesus did.

In John 16:33 He explicitly lets them know “In the world you will have tribulation…” The word tribulation here and sorrow in verse 22 are the same in the Greek. It's a word that means pressure, affliction, anguish, burdened, persecution, trouble. He doesn’t say you might, He says “you will.” That’s a guarantee.

Why?

Because of sin. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve disobey God’s command. Scholars refer to this as The Fall. They once were in paradise, then they fell. They instantly began to live in a world that was less than, below, paradise. This is true for all that have come after them - including me and you.

Sin entered the world and perfection was fractured. Suffering and death are now common. Tribulation, affliction, anguish, persecution are the rule, not the exception.

Some believe there’s nothing wrong, that we can find paradise here, that suffering is just an occasional interruption to the normative easiness of life. Scripture tells us something very different. Life in a fallen world comes with pain. The fabric of the cosmos was fractured in The Fall - sorrow is to be expected.

But Christ also makes it very clear that in Him we can experience peace - quietness, rest - in the midst of tribulation.

Our only hope of joy and peace in a fallen world, is to trust in the One who has overcome it.

Father, thank you for sending the Son to overcome the world, help me trust in Him. Amen.

To listen to the album Below Paradise on The Overflow please visit http://oflow.it/00ne/rIC3GyZffw