Saints With Addison BevereSample

Back to Life

We were made for higher things. We weren’t destined to be slaves of temporal whims. After all, we’re eternal beings—so only the eternal will satisfy our cravings. In God’s redemptive style, He uses our world’s brokenness to seed us for what’s to come. In other words, He uses temporal struggles to forge eternal beauty. 

The sufferings of the present are not even worth comparing to the glory before us. And these sufferings are inseparable from our new life in Christ. In fact, we cannot be Saints without these growing pains. The world is not right. We are not right. And the pain is evidence of God’s Spirit lovingly guiding us toward freedom and wholeness. These pains bring the futility of the False Self into focus and position us to welcome the Spirit’s life, which can fill the depths of our immortal souls.

Often we look at hardships as God trying to teach us something. But more often than not, God uses trials to help us unlearn what unmakes us. Trials offer a divorce from pride’s foolishness—they invite us to return to our childlike state. That state of being that is simultaneously full of confidence and humility. That state of being that can enter God’s kingdom: “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Without becoming childlike, we cannot know the simplicity and the sincerity of the good life God created us to know. If we are to find the good life, there’s so much we have to unlearn, starting with our identity. That is why the ideas of God’s kingdom, life, and salvation are often accompanied by metaphors involving rebirth. In order for us to receive the newness of the life found in God, we have to become someone new. 

Children are new creations; they are, in a sense, blank canvases, ready for whatever brushstrokes may come. I think the kingdom of God requires childlikeness because it’s a terrifying, seemingly impossible new way to be human. And if we are to make the jump into new life, we’ll need to unlearn the old fears and “facts” that make our lives small.

The question is, Will we continue to live small or will we embrace what it means to be a Saint?