Rob Smith released a fantastic video yesterday called, “Progress Requires Pain” on his UpwardThought YouTube channel, so I’m going to take a quick detour around my “This Life” series and put in a plug. I highly recommend watching the video here, as this post will just be my own thoughts about it, as opposed to a re-hashing of it.
The processes God uses to both abase and exalt us, as described in the video, are accurate, and they are not one-sided. So many people think that “salvation” is effected by God alone and that we are non-participants after claiming a “belief” in Him. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Salvation requires action. It requires, at a minimum, our active internal participation in the process of improvement, which will always affect both our internal and external selves and our external environment. Even when action looks like inaction, there will still be a conscious decision made to that end based on the information we are given about what would be best in any given situation.
Purging what cannot ascend requires God’s grace. God’s grace is not a one-time absolution of our sins—past, present, and future. God’s grace consists of undeserved information that gives us the opportunity to attain more of his character. It is incremental, but it can be given to us as constantly as we completely incorporate that information into ourselves.
Abasement is painful, but I have found it to be a lot like post-workout pain. At first, it may be difficult to see it in anything but a negative light. You may interpret it so negatively that you may write off ever working out again. But if you can interpret it as the very means by which you are being re-fashioned into something better, you learn to love it. It becomes a signal to you that you are becoming something better than you were before. You trust the process, and you increasingly trust God because he is the One behind the process.
I will make mention of one quote from the video:
The law of God’s justice puts you in a place where, when you’re abiding in him (which means you’re keeping…you’re living exactly as he would in your place, as far as you understand), he will send you things that seem unfair, that seem painful, that seem like afflictions. And if you’re true and faithful through that, that is the rocket fuel that brings about a state of exaltation, but this isn’t a one-and-done situation. He’s got multiple rounds of this prepared for you, but almost no one goes very far in this process. Why? Because they have an absolute limit on how much they are willing to suffer, and there is no way to describe that limit, except to include the fact that it is also the limit of your trust in God. How much you’re willing to suffer, when you don’t deserve it, is how much you trust God, and it also determines how much he can bless you. (22:10 - 23:36, emphasis mine)
This is true. Learn to love it, and you will see God’s goodness unfold to you in ways you never could have imagined.