Truly Living or Just Accepting Our Lot in Life

I last wrote about pain versus suffering. Today I’m on the bastardization of the accepting our lot in life. There’s a certain acceptance of suffering that actually lessens our experience of Life, and it occurs when we accept suffering as our lot or due. It’s not a godly surrender but a disheartening view that nothing more can be reached. It’s a despairing acceptance of suffering as normal.

I have to admit, in the past I’ve struggled with this and it looks like depression. Your eyes dim from lack of hope and you settle in to the thinking that there’s nothing better for you. It’s a ploy of the enemy to keep us down.

It’s Not Our Lot in Life

Pain is a reality and we all experience it. Suffering, however, is associated with resistance and separation from God. But what I’m writing about now is the abandonment of hope that’s fostered by the enemy. “This is my lot in life!” This state sees nothing higher than this moment’s suffering.

This hopelessness is insupportable within the Life of Christ, and it’s a quagmire from which we need to be rescued.

Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Proverbs 29:18a KJV

Myopia is a blinder and when it’s in the soul of man it’s devastating. When we can no longer see beyond this present moment, we feel that this moment is all there will ever be. The enemy exploits this state whenever he can. The enemy attempts to embroil us in the despair of life. Why? If we’re wrapped up in the despair of life, we will have no energy for the living of it.

I remember when I laid in a bed for months with a back injury. I had no hope or vision of anything beyond that bed. All I could see was the mattress in my future. I couldn’t envision a day when I’d live a normal life again. And the enemy tempted me to abandon all hope. If the Spirit hadn’t touched me, speaking peace to the raging sea of despair, I’d have drowned. And even though I wasn’t aware of His presence continually, I had enough to know He was there regardless. This gave me the sense of hope I needed to proceed from day to day.

No Vision for Anything Better

Resolving to accept suffering as my only lot in life, is to accept the enemy’s thumb of hopelessness to hold me down. We will inevitably experience pain in this life, but we don’t have to enter into the suffering that accuses God of abandonment. The solution is to daily seek and surrender to Him as God rather than resisting Him only to be covered up beneath the weight of suffering.

There are issues our souls wrestle with that cause pain. Even the process of coming into the Light can be painful. But to combat hopelessness requires vision—vision of a new day and a different reality. This is found within the hands of a surrendered soul to a God who is able, not only to use my current situation for my benefit but also to deliver me into His Living reality. He may not alleviate my pain in my desired timeframe, but He is able to work together all things for my good.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28 ESV