“That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”2 Corinthians 12:10. Paul gets happy when most of us would run away. Ya might want to think on that for a bit. 🤔  When is the last time you cheered when everything went wrong and you couldn’t fix it? …. Me neither!! When is the last time either of us remembered that the weaknesses we feel are a sign we are strong in Him? 

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” Matthew 5:11-13. When we suffer for righteousness sake, we are blessed! And if people hate us then we are even more blessed. Yeah… r-i-gh-t! “How enriched you are when persecuted for doing what is right! For then you experience the realm of heaven’s kingdom.” Matthew 5:10 TPT. So, in keeping with the theme of today’s blog — when is the last time you ran about shouting gleefully: ”I’m rich, I’m rich?” — simply because people were rude to you, or cursed you, or criticised or threw rocks at you or made your life difficult. Rocks can be words too! 

Here’s another one to chew on:  “As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed;…” 2 Corinthians 6:9. These are things nobody in their right mind would want to experience – yet when we chose to follow the Lord Jesus, that way of life became our portion. We have paradoxes by the bucket load:“Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs in the kingdom of heaven.”Matthew 5:3. As Heidi Baker once said: “My poor in Mozambique know they are poor, in the Western world, you don’t know you are poor.” Here’s a big fat revelation … she’s not talking about money or goods, etc. She’s talking about us being spiritually poor… Having stuff can cause a huge pre-occupation with keeping stuff … or getting even better stuff. We can be so obsessed with keeping our routines and systems ticking over, that our spirits can be in abject poverty. 

One of the greatest paradoxes of all is putting what we can see or feel above what He has already said in the book! Or maybe it’s thinking we can live this life however we want, and still enter His kingdom…?  Here’s another interesting one: “If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:3. Usually effort means we gain something!! But in this verse effort is secondary to something that is so ephemeral, so subjective – we need His book to define what it looks like!! And it looks like stuff we cannot naturally do – fancy God asking us to do stuff that we cannot do!

The real thing about paradoxes is that they run contrary to the way we want things to happen. Up becomes down;  in is out; and saved becomes a way of life, not just a ticket to heaven. The bible says that salvation needs to affect everything, especially the way we relate to others. If you find yourself getting snippy with someone, it’s time to do a spiritual check up, with His help. Just like you would check your temperature if you feel a bit off. Each time we say ‘yes’ to His Ways, we are saying ‘no’ to our own way, and that’s when we step into our own personal battle. 

The paradox of our faith is that it has no evidence until we act on it!  “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1. It takes faith to say nothing when you feel provoked by circumstances or someone else. It takes faith to speak to another person about the Lord. It takes faith to be kind when someone else is unkind.  Ya might want to think on things like that today. The Christian life is filled with paradoxes that cannot be understood except through the eyes of faith. Bye👋