Year: 2013

Reconsidering Our Past
Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

There is a tendency among Christians to link spiritual growth with forsaking the past. We desire profound change to happen; the kind of change that allows us to rapidly leave behind the parts of our old life we now consider unnecessary or useless in the eyes of God. The parts I speak of are not the inherently sinful ones. The sins of our past must not be allowed any place in our Christian life onward from the time of conversion. No, the things we address here are the morally neutral aspects of our past. These take many forms. They may be the enthusiasms, friendships, career goals or even the deep emotions and transcendent experiences we had before Christ came into our lives. New believers often try to reject everything that made them who they were before their spiritual rebirth.

Such rejection seemed wise in the dramatic days of that rebirth. This is especially true for those of us who came to the end of ourselves only after running our lives into the ground. In the deep desire to put our self-directed lives behind us we attempted to throw out everything that we felt was not “spiritual”. After all, weren’t we new creations? The cross was before us and the world behind us. Everything old had to go. Or so we thought.

But years later we may begin to feel that we are not progressing in the faith, that we are not where we should be by this time. Accompanying that is a feeling that there is unfinished business in our lives. More disturbingly, we may have a sense of not knowing who we are. The Christian life does not seem to make sense anymore because all we assumed God would have accomplished in our lives “by now” has not come to pass.

When this happens the immediate temptation is to believe that some terrible sin harbored in our hearts is behind the spiritual malaise we experience. Sometimes this is true. A besetting sin can poison our relationship with God and remove us from His will. The result is always a terrible sense of being in the wrong place. Life cannot make sense when we are in the far country of the Prodigal.

There is, however, another possibility. Could it be that, all those years before, we discarded part of who God made us to be? Our new faith led us to try to erase nearly everything we once were in our pre-conversion life. Did we throw the proverbial babe out with the bathwater?

I have known of more than one believer who made the decision to go into “full-time ministry” only to find out after years of blood, sweat and tears that they make terrible pastors, evangelists, missionaries, etc. Sometimes the shock of failure has been enough to deeply shake their faith, putting them into a spiritual tailspin. Why would God “radically save” them if it was not His intention that they would be the next Billy Graham?

Yet, perhaps, these vocational shipwrecks are blessings in disguise. God is not above using the severe mercy of letting us bang our heads against the wall to show us the truth about who we are really meant to be in Him. Perhaps that childhood enthusiasm for becoming an artist, pilot or veterinarian when we grew up was God-given, even though we did not yet know Him personally as a Christian.

By the same token maybe some of the joyous or happy feelings we once knew as unbelievers were not sinful counterfeits but blessed results of God’s common grace being shed upon our lives. The wonders of childhood, for instance, can be experienced by all human beings, though they come in a time before many of us are even consciously aware of the concept of a transcendent God.

It could be that some of us need to stop fearing every aspect of our early lives and instead begin to selectively re-embrace those things that once brought us some health and happiness during that time. It might even be that this is a necessary pre-cursor to God moving us on in our Christian pilgrimage. His loving plan for our future could involve re-integrating some of our old loves into the new ones we have as believers. Then, through this “holy re-integration”, we may well come to better know and embrace who our Lord always meant us to be

When Good Works Aren’t Really Good
Copyright by Shea Oakley
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“For it is by grace you have been saved, through-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9

Our truest good works are a function of the authenticity and intensity of our relationship with Jesus Christ. Any human being can perform such acts, whether they are a believer or not. In fact, by common grace, there are individuals who appear to out-give many Christians. But for the child of God loving acts of kindness towards others must be grounded in passionate communion with our Lord. Unfortunately this is sometimes not the case. Often we try to love because we fear temporal and spiritual consequences if we do not. The result of trying to do the work of God apart from the power of God is compulsion and effort grounded in our flesh. It may be a blessing to the recipient for a time, but ultimately it isn’t good for us because it isn’t fully genuine.

The Bible tells us that Jesus is the vine and we are His branches. The power to bless others in Spirit and in truth comes only from this “organic” relationship. The overflow of God’s love for us, appropriated, is what we are to give to others. We’re told that “apart from Him we can do nothing” and this is uniquely true in the area of good works.

We hear a lot about “burn-out” in the Church today. It is described as a condition in which believers have toiled so hard in ministry that they have worked themselves into physical and emotional exhaustion. If we can “do all things in Christ”, some say, then why does this happen? The answer may be as simple as this: these individuals were trying to do the work of God in the power of the flesh.

When a Christian deeply connects with his or her Savior the result is a supernatural outflow of His love. When we are caught up in the love of Christ we find our cup full to brimming over and it is an easy thing to bless others with that love. We find the strength to do even the most difficult and sacrificial acts of charity and it is not burdensome to us to do so. We become loving because God first loved us.

When believers try to do good works for bad reasons, such as from a fearful compulsion that comes from seeing God’s love as conditioned by obedience, truly good works become impossible. If love is not sincere then it isn’t love. Helping another out of fear of the consequences that might result if we don’t is not love. Love involves truly caring about the wellbeing of another and acting out of that care. Human beings do not naturally love this way, at least not to the degree that God wants us to. Only a Christian can have the superabundance of affection and devotion needed to sincerely, sacrificially give themselves away as Christ did. This potential can only be fulfilled if we fall passionately in love with Him and then stay near Him and with Him.

As in so many aspects of the Christian life it is only through intimate relationship with the Lord that we can become who He wants us to be, but the decision to seek after such intimacy is ours alone to make.

Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

Every believer is called upon to resist temptation and avoid sin. Our sanctification depends on a progressive rooting out of sin that continues throughout our earthly lives. The problem is how to successfully overcome the temptations we face on a daily basis. It is one thing to will ourselves not to give in to these temptations and another to actually not do so. Today, unfortunately, many believers locked in this great struggle do not seem to be making much headway towards living a more holy life. The same sins keep enticing us and we continue to give in to them. Why?

The answer may lie in where believers go for the power to live above sin. Whether most Christians realize it or not there is a human tendency to try to fight the flesh with the flesh. By this I mean the use of willpower alone to combat sin. The catch in this approach is simply this: it ultimately does not work. This is not to say that our wills have no place in resisting temptation. Obviously a determination not to sin has to be present before a person will make the attempt to resist temptation. However such determination is not particular to Christians or even to religious people in general. Even atheists have, unbeknownst to themselves, a God-given conscience. With the possible exception of socio- and psychopathic individuals most persons have moral scruples of some kind. Even Hitler was kind to his dogs.

It also is true that certain sinful tendencies can be restricted, to a point, by self-effort. Most of us know someone whose ethical conduct surpasses that of some believers we know. These “people of goodwill”, as I heard a pastor once call them, can make us wonder what is wrong with our Christianity that we cannot be at least as morally upright as a person who has not yet come to the saving knowledge of Christ. Truthfully, human beings do have a degree of intrinsic goodness in them that originates in our race being created in the image of God. Beyond this is the additional reality of God’s common grace that is given, in varying degrees, to all of us. If it were not true that human sinfulness was tempered in these ways we would have a form of Hell on Earth in a literal sense. As it is evil is restrained until the age of grace ends and we enter the Tribulation period the Scriptures speak of.

The fact remains that natural man cannot progress past a certain point in forsaking sin, no matter how hard he tries. It is only the true Christian who can hope to go further and even that is impossible apart from effectively appropriating the sanctifying grace of God that can be given to the believer alone. Without this appropriation even we who do believe are doomed to remain in a state that precludes the kind of radical change God wills for His children.

The key to having ultimate victory over sin is found in identifying ourselves, in the deepest sense, with the complete triumph of our Savior at Calvary. It is only in the resurrection power of Jesus Christ that we can progressively stop sinning. No effort at self-reformation will work, even if it is a method passed off as “Christian”. Our righteousness truly is as “filthy rags” and it is only in the loving gift of His righteousness that we are made clean.

The practical question posed here is how we are supposed to actually accomplish this? The answer may be less complex than we suspect. Many of us who have been believers for some years have noticed something. The closer we stay to Jesus, the less we sin. It is as simple as that. Remember, though, that simple does not equate with easy. It is OK to admit that it is often difficult for us to pray, meditate on Scripture, fellowship with other Christians, witness, etc. In short it is not easy to walk out the faith in, and love for, Jesus that we claim to have. But difficult does not mean impossible. Over time the persevering Christian is perfected in the love of God and becomes ever more intimately bonded with His Son. In this intimacy there slowly comes the appropriation of His resurrection power and, with it, the ability to progressively root out the remaining sin in our lives. An even more blessed truth is that our very ability to persevere in this way does not depend only on ourselves. God Himself makes it possible through the love of Christ applied in our lives, a love that originates in Him, not in us. His perfect love does more than just cast out our fear, as important as that is, it also casts out our sin. We need not try to achieve this love but only to accept and abide in it.

Forbearing Love and the Christian Life
Copyright 2013 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

We tend to try to change others by showing them the error of their ways. This is especially true when the error in question is one that hurts us in some way. When someone’s behavior has a negative impact on our sense of well being our first impulse is often to let that someone know, in no uncertain terms, just what they are doing wrong. This seems quite justifiable, particularly at the moment we are irritated by whatever they have done.

It is true that sometimes we are called on to be honest about our feelings when we are sinned against. This is mainly the case when another believer is the one doing the sinning (although sometimes we may even be justified in telling the truth, in love, to a non-believer if we sense that this will do more good for them at that moment than turning the other cheek.)

However sometimes, maybe more often than we think, the best thing we can do both for the “transgressor” and ourselves is to be forbearing. While being silent in the face of bad behavior is difficult, sometimes very difficult, it may be the most loving course of action if we really want to help the person change and become more Christlike ourselves at the same time.

We are living in a culture that constantly tells us, or at least implies, that we must never allow ourselves to become someone’s “doormat.” We are told that we must always be assertive and make sure that someone who hurts us is strongly made aware of that fact. Otherwise we might lose our “self-esteem.” While it is true that allowing ourselves to be constantly abused by another may not be God’s will for us we also must consider the example of Christ. Our Lord was crucified though He was the most innocent person ever to walk the earth. In forbearing the actions of those who nailed Him to the cross, even asking His Father to forgive them, he left a powerful testimony to the transforming power of suffering evil out of love for the evildoer. It is no co-incidence that one of the thieves being executed next to Him repented in His presence, nor that the ranking Roman Centurion declared in the shadow of the cross that “Surely, this was the Son of God.” One has to wonder if either man would have been so moved if Jesus had not borne the enormous wrong being perpetrated against Him without the slightest hint of a retaliatory spirit.

In my own experience I have found that when I am willing to absorb a wrong and continue to be actively loving towards the one who caused me pain that person more often than not apologizes, and even admits that they need to change in this area of their lives. If I really care about the person in question it is very gratifying to see this happen. Beyond that it has the added benefit of quite possibly making them less likely to hurt me in this way in the future.

Perhaps most importantly it also helps in conforming me to Christ.

Of course this forbearing is not an easy thing to do for even a redeemed child of God. We are often sorely tempted to “give the person a piece of our mind.” It feels easier to strike back. But the Word of God never equates what is easy with what is right, no matter how right it feels at the moment. The flesh does not give up its supposed right to retaliation in any and every situation without putting up a great deal of resistance. In fact the kind of restraint we are talking about is an example of authentically dying to self and cannot be truly accomplished without the enabling power of the blood of Christ.

The question, ultimately, is whether we are willing to absorb pain for a redemptive purpose. In a profound way how we answer that question has great bearing on the question of whether or not we are living a fully authentic Christian life.

Spiritual Amnesia
Copyright by Shea Oakley
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The world can look like freedom when our spiritual life is largely bound up in fear and compulsion, when spiritual discipline seems mostly like duty and not blessing. At such times we are in danger of believing the lie that the life we left behind was somehow more enriching than the life of a disciple of Christ. The grass appears to be greener in the lives of those who have not given themselves to God. We forget the times of blessing when we knew His touch and the things of this world grew “strangely dim”, when being in His presence convinced us that nothing was greater than staying there.

This spiritual amnesia weakens our resistance to transgression. Staying in such a place is dangerous because temptation is never more powerful than when a believer starts to envy those who live in sin and seem to enjoy their condition. Temptation’s voice tells us that we should do as the society around us does and seek whatever gives us pleasure. The idols of the world masquerade as roads to fulfillment and doubting Christians are far more likely to make a wrong turn down one of those roads if they become disgusted with their spiritual walk.

The Apostle Paul spoke of the true freedom that comes from living the kind of life which seems an unbearable bondage to fallen man, a life controlled by God. Life led by the Spirit is a life abundant with meaning, purpose and liberty from all that might destroy us. To reach our full potential in Christ is to, among other things, fully know the freedom from fear that His perfect love makes possible. This is the best conceivable state for any human being. It is the state of right relationship with our Creator.

The problem is that many of us are still trying to earn our way with God. We mistake fleshly effort for sanctification. The result is slavery to legalism so miserable as to tempt us to see the fallen, Hell-bound existence we once led as superior to it. When much of what we do in the spiritual life is done in the wrong spirit for the wrong reasons the world’s idea of freedom appears attractive. But this is an illusion and a perilous one at that. Sin is crouching at the door and we are ready to open that door, self-deluded into thinking it a liberator rather than the cruel captor it is. We have become blind to reality and once again tarry in the self-deception that we lived in before our conversion.

The answer to spiritual amnesia is not to pretend that a rule-bound Christian walk is the real thing. Instead the believer who has been looking at the world through rose-colored glasses needs to seek the true freedom that is given to us through the unconditional grace of God. We desperately seek pleasure in wrong ways because we do not experience enough of the joy of knowing Him in spirit and in truth. When we turn our sanctification over to the power of God we can glory in the freedom of being a deeply beloved child, a child who does not have to worry about being disowned. From that realization comes blessed relief from fear and the ability to live and thrive through the perfect love of our Savior.

Grace in the Gray Areas
Copyright by Shea Oakley
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Some believers seem to hate ambiguity of any kind, especially as it relates to God. The idea that there are areas of mystery in knowing and relating to Him is intolerable for many. All too often the fear that results from coming face to face with this mystery drive them to attempt to find in the Word of God a clear cut answer to every question. The problem is that our Lord has left some things for us to decide about our lives without a specific directive from Scripture.

We are told that the Spirit of the law gives life while the letter of the law brings death. It is important to realize that there is no New Testament equivalent of the book of Leviticus. Jesus did not come to micro-manage our lives by giving us a new set of rules, He came to fulfill the law and, in so doing, set us free to live by its true spirit.

A compulsive, fearful quest to spiritually dot every “i” and cross every “t” in even our smallest actions each day is a sure sign of a heart still in bondage to the law. It needs to be stated here that we are not talking about obvious sin. Sin surely exists and must be avoided. We are also not talking about simply ignoring the counsel of the Spirit in our lives. The question here is this: can we live with the gray areas, with the times in life when bits of Scripture, often taken out of context, simply do not tell us exactly what to do no matter how much we want them to?

A noted Christian once said this: “Love God and do what you please”. His point was that if you know Christ is in your heart and that you love Him above all things you can trust Him to lead you through the mysteries of life. Believers do not have to be bound by fear of the unknown. We can make choices in the gray areas knowing that God is guiding us each day, at least to the extent we have surrendered to His Lordship in our lives. We can trust that overarching biblical principles, put within us by the Holy Spirit, will help us to not get bogged down in legalism but rather lead lives of purpose and decisiveness. It is true that we will make some mistakes but we need not fear this for, ultimately, our faithful God will enable us to learn from those mistakes as we continue to give over every aspect of our lives to Him.

The Son of Compassion
Copyright by Shea Oakley
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It is impossible to know Jesus Christ without knowing His compassion. One of the most profound truths of conversion is the realization that, though we are justly condemned, the One who would rightfully condemn us does not desire to do so. As we viscerally come to know this truth, that Jesus deeply desires us to be redeemed and healed, we become willing to let Him do it.

It is easy to read about Jesus having compassion on someone in Scripture and miss the profound depth of what that means. God incarnate sees our misery and His reaction is not “they are getting what they so richly deserve” but instead a passionate desire to help. The Lord of the Universe is moved by humankind’s pain. God not only weeps over our lostness but in Christ He extends Himself to find us. This is the definition of compassion, not only being affected by someone’s suffering but actually acting to relieve that suffering. All the healings in Christ’s ministry are examples of this love in action, this willingness to enter into our place of pain and do something about it.

One of the hardest tasks in the believer’s life is to trust that when they hurt, God hurts. In the world we see so much indifference towards, often even pleasure in, the sufferings of others. We even see it in people that call themselves Christians but who seem to glory in judging others for the sake of judging others. These Christians get some sort of high from making others feel guilty rather than convicted. It seems impossible to believe that the kind of radical compassion we so desperately need could exist in such a world especially when it cannot be found in some of our churches! The bottom line is that the misery of this fallen place we dwell in seems overwhelming; and so it is apart from the reality of Christ.

But in the Son of God there dwells a transcendent love for us, one that is unaffected by the darkness of this time and place. It is the compassion of the cross. The love that brought Jesus to Golgotha was also the love that ultimately raised Him from the dead and it is this same power that enables us to be brought to and changed by our risen Lord today. When we are touched from above by God, when we are freed from some pain, healed of some wound, we need to remember that the Lord is not doing this reluctantly or begrudgingly. He is simply revealing the depth of His compassionate nature. He knows our anguish and he shares in it. Our Savior has not been called the “Son of Compassion” without glorious reason. Our pain truly is His pain and, because of His very nature, Jesus Christ will not let that pain go forever unremoved.

The Most Blessed Attribute
Copyright by Shea Oakley
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God is love. 2nd John 4 declares this twice and we so deeply need to believe, to know, the truth of this statement. For some reason Evangelicals today seem to shy away from declaring it. Maybe it is because the term was misused during the 1960’s and 70’s by those who mistook love for license. Perhaps it stems from our strong repudiation of the spirit of Universalism which has infected so many churches that call themselves Christian, but do not understand the magnitude of sin. The problem is that in counterbalancing this error we have sometimes forgotten that the love of God springs from the His very nature. God doesn’t love begrudgingly, God loves because He is love itself.

We also know the Lord has the capacity to hate. He hates what is evil, that which is contrary to His good and perfect will, that which destroys the human race which He created in His image. We know that He is capable of justifiable wrath. Yet, at the same time, scripture never describes God as hate. He hates but, if we believe John, it is not the core of His nature. If God’s anger was greater than His love none of us would have any hope at all. The essence of love is grace and it is only grace that makes possible the redemption of sinful human beings. The redemption found in the cross of Christ provides the triumph of love in fulfilling the divine mandate for justice.

It is so easy to fear God in the worst sense of the word. Our consciences tell us not only that we are capable of terrible things but that we have done terrible things. The enemy of our souls sees an opening to torment us and constantly whispers in our ears (or shouts) that we are too evil to hope for true repentance and reconciliation with our Creator. At such times a believer is tempted to despair. The Christian starts to doubt whether a holy God can love him or her. It seems that divine anger is greater than divine love. We fear the God of justifiable wrath and lose sight of the God of gratuitous love.

He, however, has not stopped loving us. It is the nature of God, and thus the nature of love, to be steadfast. It is the nature of God, and thus the nature of love, not to give up on its object. Our feelings, subjective and influenced by so many things which are not real, may tell us that God does not love us anymore. Our feelings may even tell us that He never did. Our feelings are not to be trusted. Sometimes emotions are in harmony with the truth, but very often they are not. In and of themselves they may lead us to believe in what seems to be ultimate reality, but is actually the spirit of error.

When, through deceptive emotions, the believer has come to fear God in the wrong sense and for the wrong reasons he or she is in desperate need of recalling the foundational truth communicated in 1st John 4. As we will to believe, to know, that our Lord is love we will be able, with the help of the Spirit, to put our fear away. 1st John 4:18 go’s on to tell us that “perfect love casts out fear”. God is perfect thus His love is as well. Love will triumph because He is the Lover. Love is greater than fear because it is grounded in the character of almighty God.

Do Not Lose Heart
Copyright 2013 by Shea Oakley
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Those of us who are followers of Christ in America are beginning to see the first stirrings of a widespread antipathy towards Biblical Christianity that will most likely lead to real persecution at some point in the perhaps not too distant future. If and when this happens we will simply be joining our brothers and sisters in the persecuted church throughout the last two millennia as well as with tens of millions of God’s people living in many other parts of the world today. Moreover it should not be a shock to us that our nation is rapidly abandoning its Judeo-Christian heritage. Without going into a history of secularization during the past half-century the fact is that the writing has been on the wall for at least that long a time.

What is more important for Christians here is to realize that, apart from a genuinely supernatural and wide-spread revival, this trend is unlikely to be arrested. The news today appears full of evidence that “the tipping point” has already been reached. We must prepare ourselves to live in a “Post-Christian” society that will increasingly view those individuals who espouse biblical convictions as being anathema to the new social order (the order in question being based on a particularly aggressive brand of Secular Humanism masquerading behind feel-good terms like “tolerance” and “diversity”, the kind of tolerance and diversity that leads its adherants to openly hate those they consider to be intolerant) This will be more obvious in some parts of the nation than others, at least at first, but may well gain momentum throughout the U.S. given enough time and the increasing centralization of power in the hands of a more and more wholeheartedly secular federal government.

For those of us who increasingly sense we are fighting a rearguard action against a national rejection of the God of the Bible it is becoming more important to remind ourselves regularly that He is still ultimately in charge of the affairs of man. One of the most effective ways of preparing for the apparent dismantling of “American Christendom” as we once knew it is to affirm to ourselves, and to our brethren in the faith, that our Lord knows exactly what is going on and is ultimately using it to further His redemptive ends. He is supremely capable of glorifying His Name in the midst of the moral decline of this nation while working good in our lives, even in the face of real persecution. He is also capable of bringing many new truly committed believers into the fold even, and especially, in times like these.

What we are beginning to see on our own shores is but a variation of the kind of systematic repression of true religious freedom that we have already faced for many years in places like the Islamic nations and what’s left of the Communist world (Mainland China, North Korea, Cuba, et al.) In these areas true Christian faith can be a ticket to imprisonment, torture and death. It seems a bit incongruous to expect that those of us here should expect that we would forever avoid this kind of reality. Also, as mentioned earlier, in addition to present day oppression multitudes of Christians in various other parts of the globe have known severe persecution since the days of the Apostles.

Beyond this we see in the Scriptures multiple prophecies concerning the times preceding the return of Christ, prophecies that confirm what we are seeing happen before our eyes, widespread apostasy and moral decay among them. Perhaps never before have so many human beings taken “the way that seems right to a man but in the end leads to (spiritual) death.” So it is not as if the faithful student of the Word of God can claim that something strange is going on. These are signs of the times.

Again it comes back to fighting any fear this may engender by believing the promises of God towards His hard-pressed children in any age. We are assured over and over in the Bible that He will uphold us with the power of His love and that, whatever we face in this life, He will make us “more than conquerors” as we stay true to His Son. Beyond this our Lord will vindicate His people in the end and judge those who unrepentedly persecute them.

In the meantime our job is to steadfastly hold true to Biblical truth while loving our enemies as Jesus called us to do. In places of persecution, both past and present, many of those who hated us were won over to Christ by our willingness to love them in sincere and practical ways, even as they were taking us to prison…or to our deaths at their hands. May we who bear the name of Christ in America trust the same God those martyrs of the faith have and may we not love our own lives in this fallen and dying world so much that we spiritually falter if those lives are threatened. After all, this world, including this country, is passing away and our eternal homeland is not far away. Remember that truth always, put your life in the hands of God…and do not lose heart.

Blessed are the Frustrated
Copyright by Shea Oakley
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Frustration is the pain that comes from the thwarting of our will. It is a frequent experience in the lives of all human beings and believers are by no means immune. Frustration is one of the potentially negative byproducts inherent in being imperfect creatures living in a fallen world. We want what would seem to make us happy, and we want it now. The world, however, does not cooperate.

Neither does God.

There are degrees of frustration. Daily events bring us the smaller kind; the traffic jams up, the computer goes down, a seemingly simple business call turns into a marathon session of “Muzak” initiated by recorded voices. But the thwarting of our will takes on a more disturbing aspect when it is attached to the larger issues of life. Someone waits for endless and seemingly futile years to meet a potential spouse, an illness lingers despite the best efforts to heal body or mind, an aspiring writer experiences rejection letter after rejection letter; these are frustrations with a capital “F”. With these change happens at what seems like a glacial pace and the pain of them is far worse than that of being hung-up at a railroad crossing in a car.

The primary temptation the Christian faces here is to give up. Perseverance is a biblical virtue but it never comes easily to the instantly gratified children of the 21st Century Western Church. In trying to develop a right attitude towards such “long-suffering” we are, today, especially prone to lose heart.

In dealing with this reality it might help us to know that God is both sovereign and sovereignly good to us. He knows the difference between what we need and what we want. He knows that some things are kept from us for our own protection. There is truth to the hoary old evangelical cliché, “rejection is often God’s protection”. Even if something deeply desired will ultimately be good in our lives the Lord may make us wait for it for the sake of building character in us. He, Himself, is long-suffering and if we would follow Christ, longing to be made like Him, we too must bear the cross of delayed gratification. Frustrations, big and small, are part of the crucible of pain which we must all endure for the character of God to be forged in us.

The truth is that it is better to be frustrated in the short term than to be immediately gratified to our soul’s hurt in the long term. This is a hard lesson to learn but, as with all the others our Lord wills to teach us, it is we who will be blessed at lesson’s end.