I’ve Become a Christian… So Why Does My Life Still Suck?

When we ask God to come into our lives, we may still have to live through some difficult times...

Some so-called pastors would lead us to believe that if you follow Jesus Christ it means that you will have no more struggles, strife, money problems, disease, or pain in your life. They teach the wrong-headed idea that being a Christian means a life that is free from difficulty and trouble. Some even falsely promote the notion that financial prosperity is sure to follow when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

As humans, we tend to think that anything painful is bad and that any stretching God puts us through is an “attack”. Even worse, we often mistakenly equate our circumstances with the level of love that God has for us and blame Him. When we want to escape dealing with pain and conflict, we’ll often run away from God at the very times He wants to work in our lives.

When we run away from God, we face losing the promise of healing He has for us in His way and His timing... Instead, we must stay in a place where God can truly heal us. He can’t change our past or the poor decisions that have produced painful consequences in our lives… but He can use them for good and can minister to us in the moments that we are willing to let him.

In order for us to be free of the pain of our past, we need to trust in God enough so that He can deliver us to a new place in our faith. For those of us who have issues from the past, we can look to the experience of the children of Israel as they moved from slavery in Egypt to a place of freedom in the Promised Land. The Passover story is one of the best illustrations of this.

The first Passover took place at the end of a string of plagues in Egypt that had pushed the most powerful nation in the ancient world to the brink of collapse. In the biblical account, a strong parallel exists between what God requires in terms of obedience and trust in Him...

 21Then Moses called all the elders of Israel together and said to them, “Go, pick out a lamb or young goat for each of your families, and slaughter the Passover animal. 22Drain the blood into a basin. Then take a bundle of hyssop branches and dip it into the blood. Brush the hyssop across the top and sides of the doorframes of your houses. And no one may go out through the door until morning. 23For the Lord will pass through the land to strike down the Egyptians. But when he sees the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe, the Lord will pass over your home. He will not permit his death angel to enter your house and strike you down. 24Remember, these instructions are a permanent law that you and your descendants must observe forever.” (Exodus 12:21-24)

In this story, we find an incredible list of the promises of God’s power and ability to make all things work for the good of those who place their complete faith in Him.

As God moved in Egypt, He told the Israelites to choose a side. Making such a decision is often one of the biggest obstacles that we face in our battle to make our walk of faith lasting and authentic. The invitation from God in this story was a true crossroads of faith for the Israelites. They had observed the power of God

moving all around them. They had seen the coming of Moses and a promise that God would deliver them… but they had also seen increased persecution as a result. They had seen God move in a powerful way… but had lived through the locusts, the frogs, the river of blood, and the flies.

The night of the Passover was a time of intense hardship, pain, and fear. When the Israelites were invited to choose, they were asked to choose between a meaningless relationship with God in which they only cried out to Him when they were in trouble… or to truly follow Him by listening to His voice and obeying His directions. If they chose the latter, they were told to mark their doorways with the blood of a lamb or young goat.

That kind of choice always marks the beginning of a new kind of spiritual battle. Before we chose the power of God to liberate us, we were possessed by something else. Once we choose to follow Him, we may still be oppressed by the things that separate us from Him, but they no longer own us! After we choose God, evil has only one hope of separating us from His power to liberate us from slavery to things of the past. That one hope is to convince us that His promises are not valid for us, that they have limits, or that God’s power is not perfect. But that can only happen if we run away and hide from God’s plan for us.

Satan wants us to be lost, isolated, and unsure of the power of God. The Passover story shows us that it is the power of God alone that crushes our oppressors. When we try to deal with our issues under our own power and without the spiritual strength that God has given us, we become isolated from Him and subject to even more attacks.

Satan wants us to rely only on our personal strength to liberate ourselves. He wants us to stay in our fear and pain and stop us from picking a side, marking our house and taking a stand. He wants us to focus on the risk. Satan wants us to think, “What happens if I can’t rely on the promises of God? Or what if I have ‘marked my house’ and I am not really protected?” Satan wants us to doubt the relationship we have created with God even when we have marked our house. His evil wish is that we try to defend ourselves without God.

When we ask God to change our lives, we may still need to endure difficult times, turmoil, or even persecution. If we don’t run away from the pain and begin to count it all as joy, (see James 1:2-3) we can see God in a new and miraculous way.

God can use every obstacle, every pain, every loss, and every mistake we have ever made to get our attention. He uses our times of trouble to help us turn away from those things that keep us from growing in our relationship with Him. God knows that properly dealing with our pain is the only way we can grow and sustain change as people. Only when we have been through real hardship and come out of the other side, do we begin to fully trust His ability to provide in all circumstances, in all things, and in all ways.

It is while courageously facing the turmoil of life that we learn who God is and that He can be trusted. This is especially true during the dark hours when it looks like nothing good can come from it. The pain of our lives creates growth, it changes us, guides us, and shapes us when we stop running away from it. When we have freely chosen to accept Christ, to turn our wills and our lives over to His care, things can begin to change. We can stop cowering in corners. We can stop fearing tomorrow. We can stop being consumed by the past. We have a God who has set us free.

The testimony of God’s faithfulness is something that cannot be dismissed, debated, or philosophized away by non-believers. It withstands the test of time, provided we see it as something that needs to be preserved, shared, and openly discussed. It is our personal witness as believers that stands against evil in the world.

By becoming willing to honestly face our past, we can move from being people who are plagued by our mistakes to people empowered by a new relationship with Christ!

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