"My thoughts are not your thoughts..."

So a wise friend of mine recently said to me (very unawares of the impact it would have on me), "The way that the world thinks of love and the way in which God thinks of love is very differently. We think that if you love someone then you should do everything you can to make things easiest for them or to just make things better, or to fix whatever problems they have. But this is not God's idea of love. God wants what is best for us which is often not just making things better and certainly not making things easier." (Paraphrased)

That has left me thinking for a couple days now about a lot of different things, and how that is really the kind of love that I want from God. I want Him to just make everything better...to just fix it, but his ways are not mine and my thoughts are not His. He does things drastically differently than I do, and it's not as though these moments of difficulty that we find ourselves in are a hindrance to the eventual goal of where He is taking us or as though it is keeping from what He really wants for us, but rather it is that these moments of hardship and pain are often the moment that He sometimes most wants us in because His goal is not to make us happy or keep us comfortable, on the contrary He will sometimes be militant towards our comfort and happiness because they are often things that separate us from Him and he will not stand for that. His goal is to transform us. To set us free. To bring us close to him. To make us like Him.

However....my goal IS to be comfortable and happy, and so often I find my plans and my goals at odds with the Lord's which leads to me quarreling with Him or railing against him and shaking my fist at the Heaven's or if my heart isn't quite that bitter simply sitting down in despondency and lies and feeling as though He has rejected me and that He doesn't care or that He doesn't love me. The only problem with this sort of thinking is the Bible.

But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.

So in response to my question of why? Why this way? why me? Why now? Why? God responds, "Because that is the path my Beloved Son walked giving you and example that you ought to do likewise." If it was fitting for THE Son of God to be made perfect through suffering and to learn obedience by what was suffered then how much more should I A son of God walk that same path. After all, He was perfect, but I am being made perfect. In John, God, tells us that He loves us the same way that He loves Jesus and so it only makes since that I would be made perfect by my suffering, and so suffering to Jesus was not evidence of His Father disappointment in Him or His neglect, but rather it was an evidence of His mercy, and His love, and His grace, and His approval.

Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

    "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
   nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
   and chastises every son whom he receives."

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

I read through 1 Peter last night after listening to a few sermons taken out of it, and there were 2 phrases that stood out to me from the rest: "if necessary...", and "if it is God's will...". These things Peter said in relation to suffering... which tells me that there are times that our sufferings and our trials are by all means God's will for us and that they are not moments or circumstances that we need to be rescued from but rather that we need to endure as God treats us as sons just as He treated Jesus as His Son. this does not mean that God enjoys or delights in our sufferings but rather that He greatly rejoices in the perseverance and hope and joy and genuineness of faith that it produces in us, just as He encourages us to also rejoice in because they are means to an end of our redemption and our salvation. God's plan for the redemption of all things is one that includes each moment of hurt, or rejection, frustration, pain, fear, hopelessness, doubt, loneliness, poverty, desperation, or a car breaking, down, or a dear friend passing away, and so those moments cannot be removed from the circumstances that lead up to them just as they cannot be separated from the moments of God's redemption that will certainly follow them. They were all meant to be viewed in light of the whole of eternity because God formed his plan long before he made us out of dust and you can't plan the end and not plan the means of getting there and so these moments do not stand in opposition to God's plan but rather they are God's plan or at least a part of it. If we remove these moments from the rest of God's plans and intentions for us we will lose our perspective of eternity and of His love for us, and it seems to me there are two responses to suffering. Either we shake our fist at the Heavens and harbor bitterness in our hearts, or we echo Job and David saying, "Though He slay me....yet will I praise Him....may these bones that you have broken rejoice.", knowing that He wounds those He loves.

So take heart for your Father is treating you as a son or a daughter, and He disciplines the one He loves and rebukes the one He delights in.