BETTER OR BITTER
John 16:33
"These things I have spoken to you so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world."
I have a friend, Bill, that has 40 or more apple trees in his side yard. He eats a few apples , but not many. He allows some friends and neighbors to come and get what they want for their personal use. Some of us would gather enough to make cider now and then. Bill's main use for the apples is for his local deer to come in the yard to eat. He has a dozen or more species of apples, some apple apples ripen early and some ripen later.
Two of the apple species that I would harvest for cider or baking were Wolf River and Greening apples. These apples are not well known but when conditions are right, they are very sweet and juicy, with amazing sweetness and flavor.
Throughout most of the fall these apples don't have much flavor, but when the first couple of of frosts hit the orchard they become very sweet. It's the stress of the hardship they go through with the frosts that makes the goodness of the apple shine.
There are other apples in the orchard that are ripe and sweet earlier in the fall. When those same frosts land in them, they begin to spoil and soon they get a sort of vinegar taste to them. They become bitter.
Like the frosts, Its when hardship strikes many people that they will turn away from God. If something bad happens to them, that doesn't make sense in their minds, they figure that God doesn't care about them. So, they turn away from Him thinking He's got something against them.
It's during these times or hardship when satan swoops in and does his work to turn people against God. He confuses people by whispering in their ear, "God is against you, He doesn't care about you at all." Satan is the master deceiver and his main job is the keep every possible person away from following God.
But we don't go through suffering by God's choice, it's because of sin. We live in a sinful world. The suffering could be a natural consequence to something that we did, but it could because of the sin that was brought into the world after creation.
Jesus came, died and rose again to cover that sin. But in doing so, He suffered far greater pain, physically, emotionally and spiritually then any of us ever will. He knows the suffering we deal with and He hos made a way to get through and come out better.
We have a choice, we can become stronger and more joyful through the suffering process, or we can become negative and hateful.
We have an example in the apple orchard, when suffering comes, we can become better or bitter. It's our choice.
Remember in John 16:33 "but take courage; I have overcome the world." Jesus overcame the world, so that we too can overcome the world and better, not bitter.
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