Easy Going or Overcoming?

Do we really want God to make everything easy for us so we can end up like the people on WALL-E? If you haven’t seen the movie they end up on a perpetual sort of space cruise. Everybody just lays around on floating mobile lounge chairs being catered to by robots. Eventually they get so weak that they can’t even walk and become helpless to do anything for themselves and especially in a time of crisis. We’re tempted to think that life would be better if God would just make life easier. But an easy life is not necessarily a good life. People in nursing homes and prisoners have it easy in the respect that they don’t have to work to meet their basic needs but people aren’t just lining up trying to get in. We could make life easier for children by not requiring them to get an education and maybe we all wouldn’t have to work so hard if we could just get the government take care of everybody. But then who’s going to take care of the government?

So just because life’s not easy doesn’t mean God is not taking care of you. And just because life is hard does not mean it’s not good. So before you pray for God to take away all your burdens consider what you’re really asking. If you’re not floating around on a lounge chair in heaven yet having all you desires catered to by angels yet that prayer is probably not going to get answered. But if you’re dealing with the weights of life instead of asking God to take them ALL away maybe you should pray for Him to make you stronger. Some things you will be delivered from and others we will be given the power to overcome. He’s not taking us out of the world but giving us the power of His Spirit and faith to overcome in the world. And there’s two ways to make a “yoke easy and a burden light” one is to lessen the load and the other is to strengthen the load bearer. Either way is fine with me but it doesn’t look like the “crisis” is shrinking or the darkness dissipating so what do you think God is doing? I’m thinking that sometimes He makes life harder in order to make it easier - to strengthen us and make us stronger and brighter world overcomers. In other words we’re getting an education if we embrace it we will be prepared and prosper but if we try to ditch the classes because “IT’S TOO HARD!” we’ll end up weak and in bondage. So in the long run the hard road is really the best and easy street just leads to the nursing home.

John 17:15-16
15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.
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1 John 4:4
4 You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world
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1 John 5:4-5
4 For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith. 5 Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
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Rev 3:21-22
21 To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

22 "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches."'"
NKJV