This Is Our Time

    It was around midnight last night and I didn't feel like going to bed, so I pulled up Netlifx on my pc. I tried to cancel it last month, but missed it by one day, and it put my final date late this month, so I figured I may as well get one more movie out of them - money is tight enough that I can't justify the $7.95 a month.

    I had heard a little about a Christian movie, This Is Our Time, and decided to watch it. My reasons were far from pure..... it had some nice looking young guys in it, but by the time the movie was over, that was far from my mind.

   The movie is about 5 young people who are good friends, 3 guys and 2 women, who have just graduated from a Christian college, and about God's purpose in their lives. I found myself totally relating to the one guy. He felt like he was on the sidelines, benched, and couldn't understand why God wasn't working things out in his life, but that wasn't the biggest thing I walked away from the movie with, though that did have a big impact on me.

   I don't want to give too much away, in case someone reading this blog post decides to watch the movie, but there is a tragedy that happens in the movie and the friends are struggling to understand it, understand why God let it happen, especially when they were doing God's work. One of the friends launched into a sermon of sorts, and that is the part that has been resonating in my mind. His friend had made some kind of comment about it should be easier when you're doing God's will, and this guy replied with this, not verbatim:
   "O yeah? Tell that to Paul. Tell that to Stephen. Tell that to Moses, tell that to the other people in the Bible They didn't have it easy. They were stoned, they were whipped, they had their heads cut off, they were nailed to a cross. The people in the Bible who we look at as the greatest heroes of the faith didn't have it easy. They had it hard, so what makes you think it should be any easier for us?"

   Good question. Why do we think we should have it easy? Why do we think we should have a life that is perfect, goes just the way we want it to, because we are serving God? Granted, I am not doing so right now, and have never had the kind of relationship I should have with God, nor have I felt I was in the center of His will doing some work He had for me, but still.....there is nothing in the Bible to indicate being a Christian is going to be a cakewalk, that everything will go just peachy for us and we will never have adversity. Just the opposite is promised.

  I've prayed and begged God to make me "normal." Even if I ever get the kind of relationship with God that I need, I will still battle homosexuality. I will still battle loneliness. I have been thinking lately about how daunting the idea of walking away from it and living as I should is. Its hard to do alone, yet I don't have friends to hang out with a lot, to be involved and be there for me...... but is that an excuse to not do it? Does that give me license to go on living this way? No. It won't be easy. It will be hard, more difficult than anyone else can imagine, but it beats being whipped, stoned, nailed to a cross, boiled in oil..... it beats having no arms or legs like Nick Vujicic, or paralyzed from the neck down like Joni Eareckson Tada.

   The guy in the movie had it right. The people we look at as the greatest heroes of the faith are the ones who went through the most, the ones who didn't - and don't - have it easy. And if we are one of those who don't have it easy, who knows how God might use us if we hang in there, keep on serving and trusting Him, and not give up.