Truth May Not Always Be Easy

I'm currently using an app to get myself back in shape. It's got these adorable little animations and brilliant colors. There are simple graphs to tell me if I am reaching my targets. The app counts my steps and has additional suggestions for burning calories or getting better sleep. It is the cutest, most engaging way anyone has ever told me I am sixteen pounds overweight and I eat way too much sodium. But, I think there's a problem with my app. My app makes no allowances for days when I feel like staying in my PJs and wasting copious amounts of time with iced coffee and Instagram. Isn't that just part of being human? And, how am I not getting credit for the calories I burn rocking out to Crowder as I drive to the grocery store? That has got to be at least, like fifteen hundred calories I'm burning there! Nope, cute friendly app says "two." How is a banana walnut muffin three hundred-seventy calories?! It's fruit and nuts, practically health food! Well, I can say whatever I like, the app is right. 

Let's face it, the truth can be hard to hear sometimes, no matter how colorfully it's delivered. Who wants to hear they don't meet the standard? Who, in a country that prides itself on choices, wants to hear there is only one way? And who wants to hear they can't earn it? I'm not sure why anyone would want to work harder than they have to, but we Americans love to try to earn things we can't earn. It gives us the illusion of control, I suppose; something to brag on. But, the truth of the gospel can be difficult to swallow. If you don't believe me, check out some of the sermons delivered in The Book of Acts. There were no punches pulled there. People were called out as the murderers they were. God's own people were called stiff-necked and uncircumcised. And people came to Christ by the thousands upon hearing the truth!

The truth that God gave His own Son, knowing many because of their refusal to believe, would not be rescued by it, can be a hard truth to accept. I've heard people say that any God who would kill His own Son is not worthy of worship. These people also believe women should be free to choose to kill their unborn babies, but I won't go any further on that one. It's not my intent to make this truth more palatable but, not only was this the Father's plan, but the Son submitted to the Father's will and acted in concert with Him. The Son was by no means an unwilling party. And the truth that only those chosen by God, His elect, will ever know the freedom of salvation and the reward of an eternity with Him, is rarely taught without someone having a problem with it. "Why doesn't God just save everybody?" No, the question is, "Why does God save anybody?"

Hard truth. Hard because we have such a hard time seeing ourselves for who we are. Hard because when we hear that kind of truth, it requires difficult actions: surrendering to the God of the Universe, leaving behind the life we used to live and some of the people in it, disciplining ourselves the way an athlete conditions himself for competition, and dying to ourselves daily. Believing hard truth requires us to think and act in a way firmly rooted in what was done for us in the past, mindful of what has been given us to steward in the present, and looking forward to what we are called to do and to inherit in the future. The embracing of hard truths can be hard work. Just like any lifestyle change.

"What comes easy won't last.

What lasts won't come easy."