"The world tells us in a thousand different ways that the bigger we become, the freer we will be. The richer, the more beautiful, and the more powerful we grow, the more security, liberty, and happiness we will experience. And yet, the gospel tells us just the opposite, that the smaller we become, the freer we will be. This may sound at first like bad news, but as we will see, it could not be better news.
In the Bible, slavery is equated with self-reliance.... When your meaning, your significance, your security, your protection, your safety are all riding on you, it actually feels like slavery....
...God wants to free us from ourselves, and there's nothing like suffering to show us that we need something bigger than our abilities and our strength and our explanations. There's nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need god. In other words, suffering reveals to us the things that ultimately matter, which also happen to be the warp and woof of Christianity: who we are and who God is."
- Tullian Tchvidjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free:, pages 142-143
No comments:
Post a Comment