When Life Gives You Lemons

“Life is hard, and it might not get easier.”  These words are part of a worship song we sang years ago, and they were preceded by a declaration designed to keep us focused in the right direction when hard times come: “We believe in God, and we all need Jesus.”  These words still ring true, because how we respond when life is hard makes all the difference in our Christian growth.

Bad things happen to good people, and no one is immune this side of heaven.  In fact, God even ordains some of our troubles in order to grow us and help us become more Christlike.  That may be hard to understand; but God has a different perspective than we do – a perfect and loving perspective that wants only what is best for us and everyone our lives touch.  His purposes rarely look the same as ours.

Most of the time, we humans have to fight a self-centered viewpoint.  We tend to believe that anything we are experiencing has isolated purposes for us alone.  But, from God’s perspective, it’s not just about us.  It’s about God using our story connected with someone else’s story to complete his story.  When life is hard and doesn’t make sense to us, it is important to remember whose story is being told and to recognize the privilege that we have to be included in the telling of that story.

You see, when life is hard, we have a choice: we can choose to become better or we can choose to become bitter.  Becoming more Christlike through difficult times is not a given – and it may involve pain from our perspective.  That’s because the things that matter to God are so different and so much deeper than what often matters to us.  But we can respond in faith and choose to look beyond the present to focus on God’s ultimate work in us, “. . . being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion . . .” (Philippians 1:6). 

God is always faithful, even when life is hard.  He can be trusted to “work all things together for good” (Romans 8:28) when we love him and are seeking to follow his will.  And sometimes he will even choose to use our trials as part of our future ministry for the kingdom.  But this will only happen if we are willing to be used by God in someone else’s life as he tells his story.  This is how the body of Christ, the Christian church, was designed by God – each of us being used in each other’s lives to accomplish God’s purposes for his kingdom and to bring him glory.  Even our bad things and hard things, because God is sovereign and knows what he’s doing. 

Worship in the 21st Century

I grew up in the church and have always attended church.  For 25 years, I was one of the people who helped to lead the worship part of the church service.  A lot has changed in my lifetime when it comes to style and instrumentation.  I remember organs and choirs and hymns from my childhood and young adulthood, and I remember Sunday evening services that reflected a more relaxed, down-home atmosphere.  Through the years, the organs and choirs have largely disappeared – along with most of the hymns.  In the churches I have attended, today there are worship teams that offer a more rock or pop feeling; and most of what we sing would be called contemporary praise songs.

We talk about the “worship” portion of the church service and take great care in choosing songs that support the “sermon” portion of the service and help us feel closer to God.  There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, but true worship isn’t about what we do; it’s about our relationship with God.  If a worship attitude isn’t part of our daily life, then what we do at church isn’t really worship.  Worship is about spending time in God’s presence and bringing glory to him; and that shouldn’t be happening only on Sunday morning.

Jesus taught that the greatest commandment is this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30).  Fully surrendering every part of ourselves to God is what true worship is all about.  This involves surrendered attitudes (heart), surrendered emotions (soul), surrendered thoughts (mind) and surrendered actions (strength).  You can see how this transfers to every part of our lives and not just our church moments.  This type of daily surrender to God then enhances our Sunday times of corporate worship, because it is based not on momentary feelings derived from specific music but on a living relationship with the God of the universe.

I have heard that anthropologists agree that everyone seems to have an instinctive desire and need to worship something.  Of course, God’s original design and greatest desire is that we would choose him as the object to fulfill that instinct.  But we often, even if unwittingly, choose other things: we “worship” creation instead of the Creator (Romans 1:25); we “worship” people (either societal heroes or our own family members) by giving them top billing in our lives (Luke 14:26); we “worship” possessions and money (Matthew 6:19-21); we “worship” power and control (Mark 10:43-44); and we “worship” comfort (Matthew 6:25-33).  These are just a few of the things that we are tempted to focus our worship on instead of the God who planted the worship instinct in us.

Yes, true worship in the 21^st century can be difficult.  There are more distractions than ever, and technology can act as an enemy in our worship pursuit.  But God still desires for us to give him all of ourselves and chose to focus on him more than we focus on anything else.  He still calls us to worship that reaches into every part of our lives because true relationship with him permeates everything we do or say.  Church is a great place to worship with other Christians (through music, the Word, prayer, community, etc.); but let’s think outside the box and determine to worship God every day in varied ways.  The possibilities are endless!