This is the revelation that is shaping my life today – it’s my expectations that often let me down, and then I look to blame and why, and in so doing I can miss the beauty that is present there for me.
1 Thessalonians 3:4 TPT
[4] In fact, when we were with you we forewarned you: “Suffering and persecution is coming.” And so it has happened, as you well know.
Observation
We spend so much time, and effort, avoiding what is unavoidable – “suffering and persecution.” We have fallen for the ‘good life’ fantasy story and pursue it as we deserve it. We even bring God into the story and demand that he be the assurance that we will get the ‘good life’ we deserve. Then when real life arrives and our false expectations are shattered we look for blame and answers to unanswerable why’s, and we miss all that is there for us in suffering and persecution.
There is a beauty in suffering and persecution that we will never find in the blame and why questioning. Suffering can cease to be suffering when we find its beauty. It does not remove its harshness or hardness, but it rewrites its story and how we interpret it. For in these times we are shaped in ways that no other time of refining can shape me. If I shift my expectations to know that life with bring these times and shift my questioning to be a seeking for beauty, then the beauty of ‘fullness of life’ replaces the fantasy of the ‘good life.’ And I mature into a fuller expression of the true me, the made in the image of God me. You see suffering has a capacity to bring me to the end of my established egocentric created small self and it is only at the end of my created self me do I find the beauty of the God created me. Suffering shatters to reveal beauty.
So often I extend seasons of suffering as I refuse its refining and stay committed to the blame and why treadmill. One can lose their life on this treadmill as it can become defining of the way we can see and perceive all that is important to life, and its torment becomes shaping and defining. We either stay the course of the demanding treadmill, medicate ourselves from pain until we become unrecognisable even to ourselves, or embrace the presence of beauty and transformation. “When we were with you we forewarned you.”
Application
I will be self-aware of my expectations of life. I will not pursue suffering and persecution but I will be forewarned. I will posture myself to receive its refining beauty, not be defined by its presence.
Response
Thank you for the forewarning. Thank you that in all of life you are there, and where you are there is life and beauty. Thank you that your love does not remove me from suffering but refine me in suffering.
Meditation
Meditate – be forewarned: Suffering and persecution are coming.
Consider:
What is your posture in these times?
What is your life expectation when it comes to these times?
JOURNEY DEEPER
