When Life Serves Up Lemons (and you really hate lemons)

Where's Dessert?

We've all heard the saying "When life serves you lemons, make lemon-aid".  I wonder if that was said by the same person who said "It's always darkest before the storm" or "Tough times never last but tough people do"...  I don't want to sound all grouchy but to heck with the tough stormy lemons, I'm ready for desert!

Life Lessons

I am a firm believer in life lessons. People can try to warn us and save us from heartache, but the bottom line is we MUST learn the really important stuff through experience, otherwise we won't remember the lesson. Remember as a kid learning to ride your first bike? It was terrifying but there was no way you were going to ever learn to ride the darn thing unless got got on it and started peddling! Sometimes we learn other lessons, like don't believe the person who says "I promise I won't let go of the bike", but that's for another post. The thing with life lessons is that they often hurt.

God Lessons

There are many lessons for us to learn throughout our lives. As believers in Christ, the journey becomes dramatically different. Notice how I didn't say "better" or "easier". However, the stakes are infinitely higher! Our walk with God often goes through phases as well, with each phase bringing new lessons. Based on my own walk with the Lord and those I've observed in others, these are the phases I am proposing we look at:

I'm engaged! - Ah, to be a new believer! This is often such a place of release and peace because all too often we get here through a broken road littered with jagged rocks and broken glass! When we come before God in that state and receive His forgiveness and salvation, it can feel like the entire world has miraculously been lifted from our weary shoulders. We may join a new church and are enveloped in the loving arms of our new family.

The Wedding Day - The amount of time it takes to get from "engaged" to the "wedding day" (aka baptism) can be very quick or there can be a period of required study, depending the church doing the baptism. Just as pre-marital counselling is always a good idea, so is a formal process of learning before making such an important commitment. First of all, baptism is not just some ceremony dreamed up by someone a long time ago. This was commanded by God and was first used to signify purity and devotion to God. In the New Testament, the message had two stages: 1) to show acceptance of God's message of the coming Messiah, then 2) to signify the death and resurrection of Christ; it was also an act of obedience for the believer.

I now pronounce you... - You've had the ceremony before friends and family, you have sworn an oath before God. It's official, you're a Christian! Oh, if it were that easy. You see going to church and wearing a cross around your neck won't make you a Christian any more than will sitting in your garage every day make you a car! (This has to be my favorite Joyce Meyer quote.)

You will soon discover that the more you study God's Word, the more you will see that He expects certain types of behaviour from us. Most of us are familiar with The 10 Commandments, i.e. "thou shalt not steal" or "thou shalt not commit adultery", to name a couple. Jesus had many teachings, but His most "famous" if you will is probably the Sermon on the Mount. He starts off telling us just how blessed we are when we go through the trials of life. This is great news because... wow, the list is a bit scary. 

Have you heard the phrase "To whom much is given, much is required"? Honey, if you want God to bless you abundantly, then you had best be prepared to give back to the Kingdom. WAIT, does this mean that we do things for God just to get stuff from Him! No, no, NO!! What it does mean is that the more we honestly pursue a close and loving relationship with Christ, the more we surrender all aspects of our life to Him for HIS will to be done (not ours), then we will WANT to be obedient! Another thing to consider is that God wrote these laws for OUR benefit! Think about it - imagine how this world would be if we all obeyed the 10 Commandments. Kind of gives you the warm pink fuzzies, doesn't it?

Graduation Day! - Oh Hallelujah! This is the day that we finally get to meet Jesus face to face! Just thinking about it makes me feel giddy!!  This is where our suffering ends and we get to spend eternity with our creator.

Does everyone go to heaven? This has been a heated debate for centuries no doubt. Some people say that as long as you are a "good person" you will go to Heaven, while others even debate its existence. The bible makes it very clear that only those who accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour and proclaim it with their mouth will be saved (Romans 10:9). It says nothing about being a good person. You can be the sweetest person on the planet, but if you have not accepted Jesus Christ as Lord, sorry but you will not be saved.

It took me a long time to accept this. It can be especially hard if a loved-one dies and they haven't accepted Christ. I don't pretend to have all the answers (or even some of them) and I pray that God will have a system in place to give those people one last chance. In the meantime, we should be doing everything in our power to help people learn about Jesus and the power of His love. But, there is an old saying that says "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care". In other words, helping people and meeting their immediate needs will make sharing His Good News much easier and more easily accepted than if we come running at them and bashing them over the head with our bibles.

In closing, if you are hurting turn to Jesus and ask Him to help you. If you haven't already done so, accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour and give your life to Him. Spend time studying the bible and be sure to spend quiet time with God. He will show you how to turn your lemons in to the sweetest lemon-aide you ever had!