1 Peter 4:2 –
You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God.
This is a great chapter for the basics of living with God. It talks about how things may not always be rosy and to embrace these times and “be very glad!” I honestly cannot say I have ever been “very glad” to have any trial come before me. Sure in the end I may understand the reason and how it helped me grow, but still may not be glad about the trial. That is one of those mindsets I need to work on during the trials of life.
The one common threat I seem to have with my personal trials is that I live life chasing my desires more than God’s. Maybe that is why they seem to pile on at times. More than once I have noticed these tend to spiral down into some seeming abyss before I refocus my desires. And believe me if you listened to my prayers it would be a ton of time about me and my problems. I seem to find that once every few months or so I need to refocus my prayer life. I will spend a week focusing on praying for others and not ask God for one thing for myself.
I also find if I refocus and search for a service project to help someone out, it tends to get me back being “anxious to do the will of God.” The key is find your “trigger” that will get you to remove your selfish desires and work on God’s desires. The funny thing is that once you do this, you tend to find your desires become fulfilled. Now I still have yet to win the big jackpot or have a huge windfall that removes all my debt. But I seem to be able to make ends meet and chip away at the debt when I remain focused on doing God’s will.
The problems and trial in life seem to remain when I stop tithing or when I turn to inwards. Peter talks about living for God in the first part of this chapter and then suffering in the next. Although the connection is not explicitly stated, it is implied that when your focus is on God, life’s problems tend to not seem that rough. The look on some peoples face when I talk about what I am going through is priceless. After the shop being closed for over a year, we are still dealing with judgments and lawsuits. Katy was served with a notice to produce and we just found out another company has files suit against us and we are awaiting service. I we get mired in the circumstances, we will lose focus on God and his desires for our lives.