hile we anticipate and look forward to the blessings that come from living God's way of life, there are also challenges along the way. God wants us to become more like Him so that we can be part of His family, and that requires a serious change (Romans 8:6). Change from carnal nature to godly character can be hard. Oftentimes we look at life and see a seemingly endless trial (or series of trials) and wonder if we will ever come out intact on the other side. It may seem that the more we change and obey God, the more we see the human nature that pulls at us to live differently. Does that describe your life at times? How do we keep from becoming weary when we see more and more that we need to change and overcome in our lives? God sees this struggle as well and encourages us that the trials and circumstances we face will not be our undoing. He will not allow anything to come upon us that we can't handle with Him in our life (1 Corinthians 10:13). In his book Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis wrote an interesting insight to this human struggle and why it can be so overwhelming at times: "When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good; a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly; while you are making them, you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about good and evil; bad people do not know about either." From God's perspective, things are not getting worse in our lives when we see more and more of our human nature that is at odds with God's way of life. Rather, things are actually getting better as our senses become more aware of God's standard (Hebrews 5:14). God is not so concerned about how comfortable we can be in this life as much as He is concerned about the comfort we can have in Him. Like King David, we see our sins before God (Psalm 51:3), but He is faithful toward us and, through Jesus Christ, will help us complete the process (Hebrews 12:2). Our rest will be in God, and our part is to remain diligent so that those trials we go through will ultimately have meaning (Hebrews 4:9-11). UN