Don’t Give Me an Easy Life

How does God get things done in the world? When it comes to forming a chosen people, you might think He would start with a well-developed and impressive culture—say the Egyptians or the Hittites—and let them know they were “it.” But He doesn’t work that way. He takes the long road of adversity. He chooses Sarai and Abram, living a thousand miles from the Promised Land, for a journey that results in their descendents living for centuries as slaves in Egypt. Once Moses frees them, instead of making a beeline for the Promised Land, He leads His people on a 40-year meandering journey through the desert. Only there—amidst their doubt and disobedience—can they receive God’s law and learn of His provision and forgiveness.

When God decids to become a human being to redeem the world, logic tells us that He would want to be born in a center of influence. To get things done, He would want to give Himself every advantage, wouldn’t He? But Jesus begins life in a feeding trough, is rejected by the leaders of government and religion, and eventually winds up on death row, His only possessions the clothes on His back.

God does not consider adversity a barrier to genuine, godly achievement, but the precondition for it. A Caucasian family in the church my wife and I co-pastored chose to live with their four daughters in the poorest section of Boston as part of their Christian commitment to racial reconciliation and Christian community development. They hung a poster in their dining room that read, “Lord, don’t give me an easy life, make me a stronger person.”

In frustrating and difficult circumstances, the brilliance of the gospel shines. In satisfaction and contentment, we tend to shift into neutral and coast. We are not creative because nothing calls for us to go beyond the familiar. We do not innovate: the status quo works fine. And we do not think hard because nothing challenges us to think.

Entering into adverse circumstances, however, our synapses begin rapid fire, our senses are invigorated, our adrenaline begins to rush. We rise to the occasion because an occasion exists to rise to. God does not create adverse circumstances. But through the refiner’s fire, we are stripped of self-reliance and thrown onto His grace and guidance. God was equally willing to help Solomon on his throne and Jeremiah at the bottom of a muddy well, but only Jeremiah was ready to let God use him in creative and significant ways. Adversity may make us feel far from God, but it readies us to fulfill the high calling of our daily work.