The more our spiritual eyes are opened to God’s grace, the more we see the tension between what we see with our natural eyes and what we believe in our hearts. We might ask, “If God is good, why am I not seeing good in my life?”
When my husband and I were newly-weds in the 1980s, we participated in a Bible study on the book of Job entitled, “Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People?” The whole premise was that if people were obeying all the rules, giving to the poor, and attending church, then how could it be possible that bad things would happen to them? The answers that were offered to that question were so inconclusive that I do not remember them. The goal of the study was to make us feel better during hard times, but the only nugget I took away from that study was that Job got some really bad advice from his friends, and maybe we should just keep our problems to ourselves!
This creation is waiting for something. Things are not as they should be and if everyone were honest, they would admit it. Paul likened the feeling to a pregnant woman experiencing birth pains. 1 This barren creation is yearning for deliverance. This tension is not felt just between us and this world; it’s a tension we feel in our own bodies. There’s a sense that the deterioration that we experience is going against God’s original intent.
We can lose heart when we focus on the outward. Paul said the outward man is perishing, but the inward man is being renewed each day by the transforming of our minds to the truth. The encouraging news is that the trouble of this life — the persecutions and the hardships — is accomplishing for us something awesome: an eternal weight of glory, an everlasting crown of authority. That’s why we’re to contemplate and give our attention to things that our natural eyes can’t see. 2 We don’t consider these outward bodies and these outward circumstances. We’re to use our spiritual eyes to see what God sees.
This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. (Romans 8:15-16, The Message) 3
(from pages 79-80 of Unveiling Jesus)
Want more from Tricia Gunn? Check out excerpts from the Unveiling Jesus 20-part series!
Unveiling Jesus, by Tricia Gunn, is a verse by verse study of the pure gospel of grace. It’s an amazing journey of love, identity, and freedom in Christ.
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1 Romans 8:19
2 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
3 Scripture quotation from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
