What Trade Will You Make?

“To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair…”  

~Isaiah 61:3a (The Living Bible)

As I share in my book, Fight, Flight, and Freeze (shameless plug…you should read it! 😊), my church does a great teaching on why bad things happen to good people.

They happen because we live in a fallen world… thanks Adam and Eve. 🙄

They happen as consequence of choices we, or others, made.

Sometimes they just happen.

Sometimes we blame God for causing the bad. And I see how it can look like that sometimes because he is so good at bringing good from our bad. But it is absolutely untrue. God does not cause bad things to happen to us but if we turn our eyes to him, he is waiting with anticipation to surround us with his love and grace.

Flowers growing in burned ground

We trade him our armful of ashes and He gives us unimaginable beauty in return.

We come in with mourning and leave with immeasurable joy.

I don’t know about you, but I would make those kinds of trades any day!

To make this trade, it just takes trust in his unchanging love for us. It takes letting go of the

comfort of mourning

or anger

or feeling sorry for ourselves.

In essence, when we quit focusing on ourselves and turn our focus to him, things start to change.

It is uncomfortable. Those feelings are like old friends sometimes. They are a familiar companion even when we don’t enjoy them.

Familiar hard feels safer than unfamiliar hard. Read that again…

Familiar hard feels safer that unfamiliar hard.

I used to say of people in abusive relationships, “Why don’t they just leave?” Then I experienced one and I fully realized this difficult decision between familiar hard and unfamiliar hard. The added risk of the unfamiliar can be paralyzing.

But Jesus still calls us. Maybe if there were more demands, maybe if we had to do something to earn his freedom, we would make that choice.

That is the beauty of relationship with God. We will NEVER be able to earn what he has so freely provided for us. We just have to receive the gift. Then walk it out.

Accepting the amazing gift of being able to live free of condemnation, mourning, self-loathing, performance, pain, fear. Freedom from the effects of our own emotions, from worry. He will carry those for us if we simply allow him to do so.

He asks us – almost begs us to make the trade with him. Wil we give him our bondage for his freedom? Will we trade our mourning for his joy? Our ashes for his beauty?

What kind of trade will you make today?