Why is it getting harder?

I accepted Christ, got baptized, read my bible and go to church why are things seeming to get worse in my life? I thought God was going to save me from pain and that He was going to bring me life to the fullest². Why, then, am I encountering all these problems after coming to Christ?

What did I order?

All of creation is transactional. Anything we want costs something. In our world we pay, usually with money, for everything we want. In our culture, this is a fast-paced event happening almost instantaneously, and in some cases invisibly, where we pay for what we can see with what we can’t. We trade numbers for products. Something intangible for something tangible. This is how the world operates. However, in God’s kingdom it’s the opposite. We trade tangible for the intangible. We give what we have now for something we want later; something we may not see in our lifetime.

When we accept Christ, we place an order. We order a life as designed by the Creator of the universe, and the cost is everything³. Everything we have, everything we are, everything we’ve done. There’s no payment plan. There’s no subscription, no lease, no financing. It’s all upfront. You have to pay first, with all the mistakes, all the failures, all the wounds, all the victories, all the talent, all the resources, all the scars, all the regrets, all the problems, every good day and every bad, every high and every low; everything. He takes it all and it dies⁴. There is, however, this guarantee: those who lose their life will gain it⁵. God takes your life, everything you’ve done with it, and gives you a new one the way it was intended; based in Christ⁶.

We make this choice not to destroy ourselves, but to free ourselves. We die willingly in order to throw off sin, thereby allowing us to be ourselves in Christ, living as he does⁷. Living not as robots, programmed to follow rules, but as free autonomous beings who, in choosing life, are able to become as we were designed to be. What God saw and called very good⁸.

Placing this order can be like buying a new piece of furniture. We see something we want, we go to the manufacturer, we request one for ourselves, and we pay the price. Then to our surprise we receive a box full of pieces and parts, with a handful of tools and an instruction manual, with a large notice on the side reading “Some Assembly Required”.