Why Life's Hard

When God decided to make Eve He did so for one reason and one reason only - for Adam. This might be a difficult pill for a lot of women to swallow but it is a fact of history none the less. The only reason why you even exist is because Adam needed a helper suitable for himself. This truth does not mesh at all with modern society but if you really believe in God and if you really believe that the Bible is the written Word of God and if you really believe what it says, as Paul said, that “ALL Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16), and as Jesus said, that “the Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35), and again as Paul has said, “Let God be true though every man were a liar” (Romans 3:4), then you have to accept what is written in the beginning of that Bible, that “The LORD GOD SAID, ‘it is not good for the man to be alone, I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). And thus, Eve was made.

Now we know that everything in the Old Testament finds its greater true meaning in the New Testament. I am not here to write about why women should submit to their husbands, although I do fully believe in Biblical submission of a wife to her husband. What I am here to write about is what the church (i.e. every person that calls themself a Christian) should understand from this story about Adam and Eve.

In Ephesians 5, Paul uses the relationship between a husband and wife to describe our relationship with Christ. It says, “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:24). He goes on to say, “This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church” (verse 32). And so while he is talking about how marriage ought to work in a Christian home he is also making a larger statement about our relationship to Christ. And when we accept this revelation from Paul that the godly marriage between a man and a woman is representative of our relationship with Christ then we can see more clearly in the story of Adam and Eve why we even exist at all, because God wanted a helper suitable for His Son. Paul says in Colossians 1:16 that “All things have been created through him and FOR HIM.” This might be a difficult pill for a lot of men (and women) to swallow but it is a fact of history none the less. The only reason why you or I even exist is for Christ. You don't exist for your career, you don't exist for your pleasures, you don't exist to watch football, you don't exist for your country, you don't exist for yourself, you exist FOR CHRIST!

The reason why so many peoples lives just plain suck all the time, the reason why there is a constant struggle, constant set back, constant frustration, constant failure, constant despair, constant … grinding! Grinding with their finances, grinding with their job, grinding with their health, grinding with their marriage, grinding with their family, grinding within their own soul, is because they are trying to live contrary to their created purpose. They are trying to put a square peg into a round hole. It will never work. It’s like a fish that decided it wanted to be a turtle and so it made its way to the shore and now there it is, just flopping around on dry ground, slowly dying and yet still striving to be something that it isn’t, that it could never be, rather than just accepting what it is and living the life it was meant to live. This is what a lot of you are doing. You are that fish. Because you refuse to accept this simple fact of history, this simple fact of God's creation, that you were made for one reason and one reason only, FOR CHRIST!

A lot of the American religion that parades itself around under the guise of Christianity would leave you believing the opposite, that somehow Christ’s only reason for existence is for you. They obviously wouldn’t say it so bluntly because that would be a dead give away to its falseness, but if you really begin to think about the message being conveyed and what it has possibly done to your own life and interactions with God, at the end of the day many people actually believe that Christ exists for us and not the other way around. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:8-9, “For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” Christ did not come from the church, the church came from Christ. This is obvious to anyone with any sense at all. Neither was Christ created for the church, but the church for Christ. This should be just as obvious to anyone with any sense at all. But the fact that most Christians live their lives for themselves and not for Christ is evidence that most of us don’t have any real sense at all, or we have been deceived by those who claim to have more sense than we do but who really don’t. Those people who “promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity” (2 Peter 2:19). James said, “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil” (James 4:13-16). He literally calls it “evil” to live the way that most of us are genuinely accustomed to living. God calls evil what Christianity today calls normal life.

In the book of Ezra, the people were given a task by God to rebuild the temple that had been destroyed. Except they weren’t doing that. They were not living according to the will of God, or their purpose from God. Instead they were busy building their own houses. Essentially they were serving themselves and not God. Like a Christian that lives to serve themself and not Christ. And so finally God had to send them some prophets. It says, “Now the prophets, Haggai and Zechariah the son if Iddo, prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Israel who was over them” (Ezra 5:1). It doesn’t tell us in the book of Ezra what they said but if you flip over to Haggai then you can see what God was saying to the people through him. It says in Haggai 1:4-5, “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house (the temple) lies in ruins? Now, therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: CONSIDER YOUR WAYS…” And here is the important thing for all of us, we need to consider our ways. We need to consider our own life. We need to take a very good and honest look at the reality of our life. Not the one we try to polish up and portray for others on Facebook, but the real one, the real life that only we and God know about. God is telling them, LOOK AT YOUR LIFE! While you sit around serving yourselves and not doing what I have called you to do, look at what is happening in your own lives as a result of that disobedience, as a result of that disorder in My creation. It goes on to say, “You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes” (verse 6). This sounds like most people I have ever known honestly. Most “Christian” people I have ever known. Fish out of water. Square pegs. Grinding. It is a direct result of our living contrary to the will of God. He goes on to say, “You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away” (verse 9). Who blew it away? Satan? The Democrats? No, God did. God turned all their labor into wasted toil. Why? It tells us plainly, “Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house” (verse 9). Because you serve yourselves and not Me, because each of you lives for yourself, for your own will and your own desires, and not Mine.

The will of God is that we would serve Christ, it’s what we were created for. But when we live to serve ourselves like the rest of the world does, well now we are living contrary to the will of God, contrary to our created purpose, and it destroys the entire order of things. God’s blessing cannot flow freely into our lives. Instead we sow much and harvest little. We put money in bags and it all falls out. And the church is left scratching its head, unsure of why there are so many promises in the Bible and yet life is such a struggle for everyone all the time. They make excuses for it. They turn a blind eye to the reality of it. They create their own bad theology to support it. "Maybe these blessings are for some future time… when we die?” Or they blame someone else. It’s Joe Biden’s fault. It’s my spouses fault. It’s my parents fault. No it isn’t actually. I don’t even know Joe Biden. Who is Joe Biden? Joe Biden does not command or control God’s blessing in your life. Your parents failure to love you well or give you a better example does not command or control God’s blessing in your life. You do. Either you truly repented from sin and worldliness, died to yourself and are alive to God wherein the blessing flows freely, or you didn’t! You’re just playing religious games with yourself but God is not confused, He is not fooled by any of it. Paul said, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh (serves themselves), from the flesh will reap DESTRUCTION; whoever sows to please the Spirit (serves Christ), from the Spirit will reap eternal life” (Galatians 6:7-8).

Look, I’m sorry that your pastor doesn’t have the balls to say any of this to you. But even if he did you probably wouldn’t listen anyway. You’d just go somewhere else where they would lie to you something that your flesh could easily tolerate, something that didn’t require personal responsibility and repentance, and meanwhile you'd still live in the same cycle of darkness and confusion wherein God’s hand of blessing is stayed in your life and it’s all Joe Biden’s fault. Your kids are a mess, your marriage sucks. All Joe Biden’s fault, right? No, you are a fish out of water. You are living like a square peg. You are like Eve, wandering away from her husband and spending time with a deceptive serpent instead, giving up all of God’s blessings because you simply can’t humbly accept the one thing you were created for, which is Christ.

The good news is that repentance is always on the table. The invitation to the wedding banquet is always sitting there on the counter, if ever you’ll just open it up and RSVP. Jesus said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). Literal translation, “IT IS RIGHT HERE!” Not when you die. Not in a thousand or ten thousand or a billion years. But it is right here, right now, for anyone who truly repents, who turns away from worldliness, turns away from sin, turns away from their own flesh, turns away from the devil, and comes back to their created purpose, which is to serve their Husband, wherein “all things are yours, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God” (1 Corinthians 3:21-23).

When the people of Israel responded to this prophetic word from the Lord and began to obey Him then the narrative in their life completely changed. It says, “Since the day that the foundation of the LORD’s temple was laid, consider: Is the seed yet in the barn? Indeed the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have yielded nothing.” In other words, up until this point there has been grinding, it has been a struggle, and it has not been the blessed life that I was promised in Christ. However, now that the people began to truly obey the will of God - “BUT from this day on I will bless you” (Haggai 2:18-19).

If you are not experiencing God’s blessing in your life, and I would encourage you to truly examine your life and to do what God told the Jews back then, to “consider” it. Consider all of it. Consider your marriage, consider your job, consider your family. Consider these things. Is it blessed by the Lord? Or is it being blown away? If it is being blown away then you need to repent. You need to humbly bow the knee to Him and admit that you have been living for yourself and that you have been living contrary to His created will for your life's total existence, and then ask Him to help you find your way back into the proper order of things. If you are sincere in your heart about that, then when you ask Him, He will begin to help you, and if you obey Him, then you will eventually find yourself in the place where you are truly living for Christ and where His blessing is truly flowing freely into your life like it was supposed to. Peter told the people, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord” (Acts 3:19). Repentance turns that square peg into a round one wherein everything fits together the way that God intended. The times of refreshing in your life from the Lord are right around the corner of repentance.