To Handle Adversity
5/29/09 Reflections Every adversity is an opportunity to glorify God. First we honor Him by persevering and not abandoning hope in Him. Then we honor Him by using the setback to further His agenda.
God doesn’t want bad things to happen to us. It’s the nature of this phase of our lives that evil must exist, but it exists for our eventual good. Our becoming perfect glorifies God, and we cannot become perfect except by wading through this imperfect setting.
To listen to most churches tell it, we are inherently so evil and the devil so powerful that God’s love often cannot overcome our tendencies and so He is forced to banish us from His sight for all eternity, as punishment for not being good enough to win the struggle.
This hogwash has kept millions of human beings from enjoying a right-relationship with God. You cannot hope to get close to this kind of God. This God demands what you can’t give – power over God Himself. This is a false idol, and when churches demand you board this merry-go-round, they are guaranteeing that your path will be more difficult than God wants it to be. We give in to this because we’re used to trusting human words; not communication from God directly.
Religion is the greatest adversity of all; the most insidious, most persistent obstacle to a right-relationship with God. Thankfully, God doesn’t really make marks on your scorecard – He puts what He wants for you into your consciousness and pours the means to get it done into your spirit. You use your free will to respond to God’s presence in you, but that’s icing on the cake for your life in this world. It has nothing to do with the real world, God’s kingdom, that you live in but which fullness is hidden from you as long as you’re subject to the adversity of this imperfect world.
That kingdom is yours because that’s what God created you for. For anyone to tell you God must change His mind about loving you because of what you do or don’t do here gives you a power over God that you know in your very being you don’t have. Why do you believe anything they tell you? Run as fast as you can into the arms of God – you are welcome there no matter what you’ve done, you deserve this personal relationship with the Creator, God will not turn you away, and you will be given the powers God feels are right to share with you. Any religion which teaches of a God any less than this is an obstacle around which God wants to guide you. In adversity He demonstrates how loved and protected you are – use these as opportunities to get closer to Him.
