A second attempt….

Here’s a popular job interview question – “if you could live your life over again, what would you change?” The interviewer is hoping for a moment of honesty, where the candidate might share about something that went wrong in their (working) life and how they addressed the issue and how that reflects on their suitability for the job. Is the candidate self aware, self critical and willing to take corrective actions?

The answer they’ll probably get is either “well I should have dumped my ex sooner” (irrelevant to the job) or “I wish I had found out as soon as I left school just how amazing a career in paperclips could be” (absolute twaddle and probably an outright lie).

How would you answer? What would you change? What mistakes would you avoid? What struggles or painful episodes would you cut out? What would you add in – better school results, better job, more money, more friends…? Could be an endless wish list.

Now here’s a thing. If you’d asked me that question maybe 30 years ago I would have had quite a little wish list of my own. Now I’m a bit older, but more importantly, I’m more aware of how God works in my life. Perhaps it’s because I have more life to look back on than a lot of people. But looking back I can see God at work in my life.

If you look back over your life you will be able to see how He has been working in your life too. Initially you might look for those high spots – the moments when you felt He was particularly close. Or you might think about the occasions when He really intervened for you by providing something, or opening a door, or guiding you or perhaps even saving you from disaster.

What about the low spots though? What about the dark times? What about the times when you felt abandoned, left alone to struggle through? What about the times when you made mistakes – maybe serious mistakes; what about those times?

I have learnt enough to know that if I was able to change my past and I set about adding in more good stuff and removing all the bad stuff, the end result for me would be worse not better. I have had some unpleasant experiences in life, some of them as a young child. I have made mistakes. I have had years that have been nothing but a struggle financially – particularly when our children were young. But as I look back I can see how God has been steadily at work.

Don’t ever make the mistake of looking back at the difficult times in your life and thinking that the best solution would have been the removal of difficulty. In the pampered and easy life that by and large we have in the western world, there has been a tendency to see Father God’s main role as one of smoothing our path, removing obstacles and providing whatever we need (or think we need) so that things get better and better. The mistake is to think that He is primarily concerned with our present wellbeing, when in fact He is concerned with who we are becoming.

My hard times have been my formative times. How I have walked through them and how I have learned from them has been what determines growth in me. And sometimes I haven’t learnt, and haven’t grown as I ought and haven’t drawn closer to God. That simply leaves me open to other experiences that will challenge me – a divinely appointed re-sit!

Don’t get me wrong. God is not the author of life’s struggles and difficulties. But one thing I have noticed is that He is a tremendous opportunist. He will take advantage of what life throws at us. If we are not careful we can drift through life letting life just happen to us. Jesus in us however, has no intention of drifting. He didn’t choose to live in you or me so that He could drift. He is looking always to the future – your future. What will you become? That’s what the Bible means when it says “Christ in you, the hope of glory”

What we should be saying to Him is not ‘Life is so unfair, get me out of this’ but rather, ‘Lord, what do you want me to become in this?’ We are being changed “from one degree of glory to another”. Maybe it is only one degree at a time – but it all adds up 🙂

Even when life goes wrong because of our own mistakes, Jesus is always looking to the end result. He knows what you are going to do before you do it. But He is committed to you, actually united to you, for ever. He knows what it is to live through stuff with you and He is prepared to do it. He chose to do it. Why? Because He loves us and He wants to bring us through to full maturity – changed into His likeness.

Living all of life with Jesus in us and working in us is what shapes us. That is what discipleship is all about. It never was about a checklist of do’s and dont’s, about learning or being taught. It’s about living our lives with Jesus in us and Him firmly in the driving seat.

What is going on in your life at the moment where the most important question you can ask is “Lord, what do you want me to become in this?”