Undesirable Events

It has been 6 years since I posted anything! That's ridiculous!

So, in order to get myself producing some content again, over the next while I'm going to upload a few talks or devotions that I've produced for other forums recently.

Starting with talks I've done for our church's YouTube devotional page. These are meant to be 3 minutes or less long (give or take) so they'll be fairly short posts. 

But, in no particular order, here is one I wrote for 24th of November 2020.

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In the Garden of Gethsemane, in Luke 22:42, Jesus prayed: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me, yet not My will, but Yours be done.” This was when God was asking Him to suffer the horror of a death on the cross in order to bring salvation to the world. Jesus knew this was His calling. In fact, it was the very reason He came to earth in the first place, but it also was something that was not at all desirable to go through.
 
When we face troubles in life, unpleasant or uncomfortable situations, it can be tempting to rail at God, and to accuse Him of forgetting us, or not loving us, but as Gethsemane shows, God always has a bigger plan.
 
In Psalm 23, the most famous psalm, and one that shows God’s gentle caring nature towards us, we get the verse “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me.” We may have to go through the valley - the verse doesn’t say “if I walk through the valley” – but He will be with us, journeying with us, even when we don’t feel it.
 
But why do we need to go through things that are uncomfortable?
 
Well, as always, it’s important to acknowledge that sometimes bad things happen just because we are in a fallen world. In these moments God may not necessarily be behind the trials, but He will surely be with us.
 
And sometimes God makes us uncomfortable to get us to face our sin.
 
But it’s not just sin that God has to deal with in our lives. Jesus prayed “Not my will but Yours be done”, a cry that Paul echoes when he says in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ, and It’s no longer I but Christ who lives.”
 
God wants to be our LORD not just our Saviour. He wants us to lay everything down at the foot of the cross, not just our sins. And sometimes that involves discomfort. Keith Green said “It’s easy to give up your wrongs – but much harder to give up your rights.”
 
Yet this struggle can be made easier when we remember who God is. A loving father, who not only wants the best for us, but can see the beginning and the end, and knows how to get from one to the other.
 
A reassuring reminder is that in trusting God, even when our comfort or security, or even safety is given up, we are pursuing the only sure course for our lives, the only one with eternal value.
 
Let’s praise God for his faithfulness, and let’s be ready to lay down our own will and take up His calling for us.