Why It's Hard

I had another epiphany while meeting with my friend on Wednesday. Again, it was one of those obvious things you know and it's not complicated but it just clicked. It's an answer that I think makes a lot of sense for the Christian who is asking: why is it so hard? Here's what I mean. We have to daily remind ourselves of the gospel. The good news that Jesus died for us in our place so that we are set free from sin and graciously given Jesus's righteousness in place of our deserved condemnation for our sin. This should give us joy and make us rejoice, but we forget. It is hard to walk according to the spirit and stop sinning. It is hard to walk by faith and not by sight. We often walk according to all that we can see instead of trusting and relying on God.

Why is it that we don't just automatically do these things? We are certainly given a new nature and are a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17) if we are in Christ, but it is a struggle. We have to be at war against our sin. So... why is it so hard? I think it is so hard because we are meant to rely on God daily and the difficulties lead us to him. We must run to God in dependence because we cannot do it on our own. We are unable to do it easily in our own strength because we weren't meant to. The very way God created us to live, part of that being that it's a daily struggle and battle, draws us to him. I think that is so cool! While there are many times I wish it was just easy to stop sinning, easy to walk in the light as he is in the light, live our lives without grumbling as blameless and innocent Christ followers in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation (Phil. 2:14-15), the difficulties make us run to him as he has created it to be! The very difficult nature of our existence leads us to stop relying on ourselves and look to Christ.

As I'm looking up verses to support what I'm saying, I find Hebrews 12:1-17 a wonderful passage on this that, of course, says it far better than I can. But I just love the idea that the answer to our question "why is everything so hard," which I find myself muttering often even though I have a very easy life, is this: God created this world to be hard so that in our difficulties we would run to him for help and stop believing the lie that we can do it on our own (John 15:5).