Day 184

2 Kings 6:24-8:15, Acts 22:22-23:11, Proverbs 16:8-17

Life with God can be great but life with God can also be hard at times. The story of Paul and the other Apostles shows us that being a disciples does have a cost to it.

On the one hand we have the widow whose son was raised from the dead. From being in the worst possible place, having lost her husband and her son, she is now in a very different place. Her son is alive, she escaped the famine and now she has come back to find that she can have her house and land back and all the income while she was away. God is certainly looking down on her favourably as she walks with Him.

Then there is Paul! In fact, he isn’t having a bad day today, he has managed to avoid a flogging and the Romans have just pulled him away from being ripped apart by the Sanhedrin. In the bigger picture though Paul does have a bit of a rough ride, Stephen died about a month ago in our reading of Acts, and we know that in following Christ the cost of discipleship took others to the point of death.

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.””
Matthew 16:24

When we see two contrasting pictures it helps to highlight both sides of the story, that life with Christ can have times of immense blessing but also times when it can be a struggle.

In the midst of the harder times though we can look to v11 at the end of the Acts reading. Firstly “the Lord stood near Paul” – we can always be assured of the presence of God with us, even (and especially) in the darkest times. Secondly God said “take courage”. He will not just stand by us he will provide all that we need to have courage when we face trial.  We will soon be coming to the epistles, a look through Paul’s letters when we will see mention of all that the Spirit will offer.

On the journey of discipleship with Christ, rejoice in the good times but rejoice also in the bad times. God is never far and we can only pray that in all seasons our lives give glory to God.