Why Life Has To Be So Difficult

AT FIRST, I THOUGHT Jesus was just asleep and not paying attention to the circumstances in my life. Later I thought he had silently left his seat on my bus. Matthew 8:23-25

For a while, I thought he had stopped loving me. I thought I really did not matter to him, which incited my anger for doing so much more for him than he was doing for me. 

As a child, I often felt that I was unloved and did not matter. It wasn’t true, but I could never shake that feeling. As a result, I turned into a performance hound, always trying to please my parents. 

I learned how to get fleeting moments of the security that comes from feeling loved and significant, by becoming over-responsible for my family. Doing. Doing. Doing.

The good news is that I did not go down the road of drugs and drinking like so many of my peers in school during the 1970s. Instead, as a teenager, and working to help my family, I learned how money could solve a lot of life’s problems.

The bad news is that I had an unhealthy fear that keeping my family together was on my shoulders.

And an ever-growing dependency on money. 

It was the beginning of the loneliest period of my life. 

Since little regard had been given to the matters of my heart, either with my family or my bosses, I thought my primary motive for taking up space on the planet was to solve other people’s problems. In doing so I believed it only a matter of time before I would find the solution to my biggest problem, which was the desire in my heart to be loved for who I am. 

And not what I do. 

After many years of coaching others, I learned that I am not alone in wanting a full measure of love, respect, significance, and security. We all have different beginnings but we all travel a similar road. Many of us fail to recognize the primary motive, which is to satisfy the heart. 

Some of us take deeper blows to the heart than others, and as a result, we try to forget that we have a heart that demands attention. 

Some of us did not learn how to go through the pain and suffering from shattered dreams and expectations, but instead, we learned how to medicate the wounds. 

A focus on money and men did the trick for me, or at least I thought so.

Until I had plenty of each, and like any drug that builds a tolerance, my body craved something different. 

At thirty-two years old I was baffled, and even though I was dismayed, it never occurred to me that I would never find the fullest measure of love, respect, significance, or security, until my heart connected with Jesus.

This is why I am so grateful I heard the voice of God who called me by name when he asked why I call myself Christian. 

I was lost and did not know that I was. 

Jesus knows before we do that we’re in trouble, but when we’ve spent so many years driving the bus rather than letting him drive, he might have to remove himself from the seat in which we see him in our rear-view mirror. Otherwise, we may never know there’s anything wrong with the road we’re traveling. 

If you believe the whispers that tell you God does not love you; or that you do not matter; or that God is not doing enough for you; you may need a wilderness or desert experience to see where those lies come from. 

If you are like me, you will find that we, alone, can sufficiently kill ourselves with our best thinking. 

And, if you are like me, you will see that you had to go through the journey you’ve suffered. Otherwise, you would not know the truth about yourself, and the need to be saved from yourself once again.  

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.—Isaiah 55:8-9 (ESV)

Luke 12:34, Psalm 135:15-17,Colossians 3:2-6, 1 Chronicles 16:26,Jonah 2:8, 1 John 5:21

As always, it is my intent and hope that my words may encourage you wherever you are in your journey.

Please share your thoughts in the comments below or go to the group tab above to share your own experience. It only takes a minute of your time to register (and you can be anonymous), and your words may help others.

If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.–Jesus (Mark 4:23)

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