SOMETIMES LIFE SUCKS

Here’s Why, What You Can Learn, and What You Can Do

If sometimes life just seems unfair or things are just too hard to bear, this word may bring you great benefit. This isn't another highfalutin, philosophical "life's unfair, but God is good" message, but one of meat for a hungry follower of Christ.

You should first know that I am not coming to you from an ivory tower, peering down on the misfortunes of others with pretentious rhetoric while isolated from them. No, rather, just as a quick overview, I was raised and spent my early years enduring alcoholic physical and mental abuse; as a businesswoman and divorcee, I've been defrauded, bankrupted, evicted, kidnapped, molested and raped; I have buried my mother, father, cousin Patty and only brother Jerry; together, my son Greg and I have worked lovingly for 27 years with residual effects of his traumatic brain damage (he's graduated from college and is are overcoming, I might add!); and my husband Michael struggled for about ten years with severe heart damage (no one except God and I, to a lesser extent of course, had any concept of his unrelenting daily agony); and he took off to heaven in March of 2010.  The point is, I could have thrown in the towel long before this and said to hell with it all; who needs this? And I think God would have had mercy and grace, and forgiveness.

BUT GOD! He has been teaching The WHYs. Why the struggles. Why the pains. Why the deaths. Why the agonies. Oh, I pray that you will hear, learn, and grow from what He has taught! Here in this little synopsis is the gist of it (however He has provided so much more for this teaching from His Word to help us come through and OVER):

Planet Earth is our proving ground. In John 15:1-2a, Jesus has just told us that He is the true vine and His Father, the Husbandman, Who takes away every branch that does not bear fruit. That makes perfect sense, and is good news for us. But then, in John 15:2b, He gives us the answer to our ‘Why the horrible stuff’ questions:

“Every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it,

that it may bring forth more fruit.”

He purges (cuts, lops off, removes) the FRUITFUL (GOOD!) ONES?

Yes. We aren’t just disciplined when we’re unfaithful; He carves each and every one of us to make us even better when we’re doing well!

His pruning hurts even more when we haven’t done anything wrong. A dead limb being lopped off isn’t particularly painful since it has no life in it, but having a perfectly fine, living arm cut off is mere torture to us. We actually know this is so, for this is what we’re experiencing. And, He has told WHY these agonizing things are happening:

So we will bring forth MORE fruit.

Paul told us more. “[But what of that?] For I consider that the sufferings of this present time (this present life) are not worth being compared with the glory that is about to be revealed to us and in us and for us and conferred on us!” (Romans 8:18, Amp).

IN THE INTERIM, THOUGH, THE WORD OF GOD GIVES US TOOLS AND TREASURES WITH WHICH TO OVERCOME ADVERSITIES YOU MAY HAVE NEVER BEFORE REALIZED!

I'd welcome the opportunity to share with you some of the mysteries God's revealed during my 13 years of studying the wonderful Word of God with Him! Amen in Jesus' name.