Followby Brian Sharpe
When Ellice was really young, she didn’t like taking medicine (she still doesn’t like to take it). She would fight us, even though what we were giving her was going to make her feel better. She would kick and scream and get herself so worked up that she would be drenched in sweat. And sometimes I’m like this with God.
Throughout my life, I have asked God to change me and make me more like Himself. This prayer was sincere, but it was prayed with the thought that God was going to press a button up in Heaven and when that button was pressed, I would be fixed.
The older I get, the more I realize that this is not how God works. He allows us to walk through stuff for us to learn to trust and allow Him to work in ways we didn’t even know we needed. James 1 says that the testing of our faith leads to perseverance, and perseverance leads to maturity. It is the perseverance that I don’t like. I am “okay” with the testing of my faith, as along as it leads to maturity, but I am not okay with it leading to perseverance. The problem is, maturity doesn’t come without perseverance.
Moses is a great example of this. In Joshua 1, Moses is talked about as a servant of God. God was with Moses and used Moses. Moses had to go through a lot in his life, which led to perseverance and, ultimately, maturity. The same can be said of Job, Peter, Paul, Elijah, and Elisha, to name a few.
We often forget when reading the stories of the Old Testament that time is passing. These heroes of the faith aren’t instantly heroes; they go through tough stuff, persevere through it, and come out mature. The saying that “God doesn’t waste pain” is such a true one. God allows stuff in our life, and we can either grow in maturity or let it debilitate us because of fear. The book of Joshua talks about how the people in the Promised Land were debilitated by fear because they knew that the God who created the universe was on the nation of Israel’s side. They feared Him because of the stories they had heard about how God had protected His people. We need to remember the ways the Lord has protected us throughout our life so that when tough times come, we will remember He is with us.
When the nation of Israel was crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land, God stopped the flow of the river so that they could cross on dry land. Once everyone was across, God had Joshua pick 12 men to grab 12 stones in order to build a monument of remembrance, so that when their children would see the monument and ask what it was from, they could tell the stories of how God was with them. We need our 12 stone monuments. We need to remember that God is with us and wants to protect and grow us into mature followers of Himself. This happens by the testing of our faith, which leads to perseverance and, ultimately, maturity. Sometimes the very thing we need is the thing we don’t want, but in the end, it will bring us to the place where we want to be.
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