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One Thought that We Must Give Up

               Every year, my brother and I do a week long motorcycle trip together.  This year’s version consisted of driving rain, hail, broken tent poles, three inches of water in my basement at home, two flooded vehicles and a wind so strong that it blew us off the highway and into the ditch.  It was the worst vacation ever!
                Standing on the on the side of the road in the middle of North Dakota with rain pounding down on me, I began to think, “This should not be happening to me!  I am a nice guy who tries to help people all the time. I deserve better than this!” 
Honestly, though, that is not true.  In fact, it is not even logical.  Bad things happen all the time, so why should I be exempt from them?  Logically speaking, bad things ought to happen to me once in a while. 
                More than that, though, those thoughts are not scriptural.  Some believe that if you follow God everything will be easy, but even a cursory reading of God’s word would prove that is not true.  Jesus himself plainly said, “In this world you will have trouble!” (John 16:33)
                In Luke eight, the disciples are caught in a huge storm on the Sea of Galilee and they are scared to death.  Eventually, Jesus calms the sea and saves them, but it is worth noting why they got caught in the storm in the first place. Verse twenty-two tells us that Jesus told them to get in the boat and go out there!  Rather than always protecting us, it seems that God sometimes allows us to experience less than desirable circumstances in order to teach us something that we could not learn in any other way.
                We must stop thinking that bad things should not happen to us.  Jesus did not come to make your life easy or safe.  He came to give you a way home.
                “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

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