Scrambled Eggs and Christian Maturity

Dear Church,

I love eggs.  I eat lots of them.  I like them over easy, but my favorite way is scrambled. I like them loose, moist and fluffy with salt and pepper.  If I feel like throwing my health to the wind, then I add cheddar cheese and ham.  As I was making my scrambled eggs this morning, I realized that my simple breakfast is a metaphor for life as a Christian.   To make scrambled eggs you have to break the shell, exposing the egg inside. Then you take a fork and beat those eggs so that the yolk breaks and mixes with the white.  Next, you pour the liquid eggs into a pan, exposing them to the extreme pressure of the external source of intense heat. Finally, you push them around the pan with a spatula until the liquid eggs become solid and firm.  Then you take them off the heat.

The Christian walk is like scrambled eggs. Like the egg, so often we are broken and beaten, and exposed to the extreme pressure from the world that comes in various forms.  It can be work pressure, time pressure, financial pressure, health pressure, relational pressure, and so many other kinds of pressure that the we are subjected to by the world.  How can we manage all of this pressure?

2 Corinthians 1:8-11 says, “⁸ We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. ⁹ Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. ¹⁰ He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, andhe will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, ¹¹ as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.”

When Paul wrote this, he sounds like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  The pressure was beyond what he could handle. He thought that he was about to die.  He was broken and beaten and subject to extreme pressure from an external source.  We are not told what the source of the pressure was but it must have been great, if he despaired of life itself.  In reading the book of Acts, we find several instances where Paul was under extreme pressure in Asia.  But in his circumstances, he learned to rely on God and found that God was able to deliver him. That knowledge strengthened his faith that God would continue to deliver him. What a great encouragement in a time of great need!  Not only for him, but for those who were praying for him.  Many shared in the blessing.

God allowed Paul to be broken and beaten, and subjected to extreme pressure from an external source, to make him solid and firm like my scrambled eggs.  When Paul learned the lesson God had for him, God took him off the heat.  When we face the pressures of life, we must know and embrace the truth that God has a reason for them.  Nothing can happen to us without God allowing it, and God doesn’t waste anything that He allows.  God intends that the pressures of life will build us up, make us solid, firm and steadfast, that we will grow in maturity, and that our maturity will help others become more mature in their faith as they are encouraged by our maturity.  

As you face the pressures of life, whatever their source, I pray that you will be encouraged, not discouraged. At the end of verse 9 above, Paul says God allowed the pressure so that they might rely not on ourselves but in God, who raises the dead.  I don’t believe that Paul wrote those last words as a modifier, so that we would know which God he was talking about.  I believe he was saying that God raises the dead and that if Paul died, so be it, God would raise him up again. Coming off Easter weekend as we are, we remember that our hope (defined biblically as a “sure and certain expectation”) is that God will raise us from the dead. 

If we can look at life from God’s perspective, we will see like Paul did, that our afflictions are momentary compared to the eternal weight of glory that awaits us in heaven.  Pressure is for a time, but then God removes the heat as He makes us more solid and firm in the faith.  I pray that we trust God more in our circumstances as we read His Word, pray, and develop our relationship with Him.  Even when we are broken beaten and exposed to external pressure, we have a God in heaven who loves us, who sent Jesus to die for us, and whose plans for us are for good.  May the pressure you are exposed to make you more solid and firm as you trust in the Lord today.