Going on a Bear Hunt

I think we as Christians like to preach a prosperity Gospel sometimes. We like to tell people how much better, easier, or greater their lives will be when they have Jesus in it. In some ways this is true. Jesus has certainly made my life better. However, this is not completely true. Being a Christian does not mean that you’ll walk through life in a bubble that blocks out all hardship. 

We live in a fallen world. This means that trouble, loss, and pain are bound to come knocking on your door. I don’t mean to be the bearer of bad news here. It’s just the world we live in. We all know it. We have all been there. We are far too old, and not naive enough, to still think that life is all rainbows and sunshine. 

I’ve got my battles and you’ve got yours. 

The difference for me though is that I let Jesus fight my battles.

Being a Christian might not make me immune to pain, but it does give me the next best thing. Knowing Jesus gives me the ability to find joy, hope, and peace even when those hardships come knocking. 

There’s a guy in the Bible who seriously went through it. For him, becoming a Christian actually made his life a lot harder. This guy’s name was Paul. Let me tell you a little more about his life. 

Paul hated Christians. Yep you heard that right. The same guy who wrote thirteen different books in the Bible hated Christians. So much so that as a Pharisee he took part in persecuting the early Christians. (This means he was killing them - yikes!) Luckily, God stepped in and opened his eyes, literally. It took completely blinding Paul for three days for him to realize how spiritually blind he had been all along. 

When his sight returned, Paul set out to tell everyone about Jesus. But like I said, when Paul became a Christian, his life did not get easier. Paul being blinded was only the first hurdle that God made him jump through. Throughout Paul’s time ministering he was imprisoned, beaten, stoned, and flogged. He was shipwrecked on three different occasions, and he spent many nights in chains sleeping on cold floors with an empty stomach and yet Paul was still able to find joy through it all. 

You might be asking yourself - how? How on Earth could Paul still find joy in these kinds of conditions?

One of my favorite verses in the Bible comes from Paul himself in Philippians 4:4 when he says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Paul does not just tell us to rejoice once but he says it twice. He says to rejoice in the Lord always. For me, after really good performances or a big win I found it so easy to say, “Rejoice in the Lord always!” After bad games? After bad days? Sitting alone in an apartment hundreds of miles away from everyone that I loved? Suddenly saying that got a lot harder. 

I know we have all been there before. Maybe for some of us it is as small as a bad sports performance and for others maybe it is something as big as the loss of a loved one. Either way we have all been sitting in one-bedroom apartments on rainy days wondering if life is ever going to turn around. 

My advice to you might be really really hard, but I want to share it because I think it is exactly what Paul was trying to tell us when he said to rejoice in the Lord always. 

Seek God through it. 

When I was a kid, we used to play a game called “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”. My Mom made that game up after we read the children’s book by the same name. Me and my siblings loved it. We would walk up to a garden or pool or anything in my backyard and say, “We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh, no! We’ve got to go through it!” No matter what was in front of us we would keep going forward. 

I don’t think my Mom intended for this little game to be a life lesson but that’s what it came to be for me. In life there are things that we would love to jump right over and skip. Seasons in our life that we would like to just hop in bed, bury ourselves under the covers, and press fast forward. 

There are plenty of times in my life where I have wanted to give up and give in. 

BUT giving up always seems like the easiest way out. Going through it can seem impossible. In one season of my life, I was living on my own in a different city away from my family and friends. When I made the decision to move, I thought I was going to have the time of my life. When I got there though things didn't exactly turn out as I thought they would. However, I had made the commitment to be there. No matter how much I wanted to quit and go home I told myself over and over that I had to go through it. I had to finish the bear hunt. I would think back to that silly little game, pull myself up by my bootstraps and say, “I’ve got to go through this.” 

When I was in that season, I thought I would never get out of it. I truly felt like there was no end and sometimes rejoicing in the Lord felt like the last possible thing I wanted to do, but that is exactly what I did. When Paul told us to rejoice in the Lord always, he was not sitting on a beach sipping a Pina Colada and enjoying the sunrise. 

It was actually the opposite. 

Paul was in prison. He told us to rejoice in the Lord always when he himself was in chains. If there was anyone who was “going through it” it was Paul. So, when things got hard for me, I did the exact opposite of what I wanted to do. I would rejoice in the Lord knowing that He is not sometimes good or usually good, but He is always good.

Was I unhappy? Yeah, a lot of days I was. Did I lay in bed and cry? More times than I can count. But through all of it I was still able to find joy because I knew that God would see me through it.

Right after Paul tells us to rejoice always, he says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” This is what seeking God through it looks like. It is praying to Him and knowing that He hears you. It is the peace of knowing that you don’t have to go through anything in life alone. Through the good, bad, and ugly you can still rejoice because of who your God is.

So the next time you don’t want to rejoice just remember Paul. Know that if he could see how good God was throughout everything that happened to Him then I believe that through the power of God you can too.