Recently in my ministry travels, I prayed for a woman at the altar who was heartbroken at the thought of giving up her nursing license. She was an RN who had worked so hard to become one.  I asked her why she felt she needed to relinquish the license and she said that God had recently called her to go into another type of business full time. I asked a few questions, and these were her answers:

When God called you to this other endeavor, did He specifically tell you to give up the nursing license? (No.)

Do you want to give up your nursing license? (No.)

Can you afford to renew the nursing license when it is time? (Yes.)

Have you ever  been on a missions trip or wanted to take one? (Yes! I would love that!)

Have you ever thought of going on a medical missions trip? [She gasped, as if having an epiphany]

Her face lit up.

“I see where you are going with this! Keeping the license may come in handy even if I’m not serving as a nurse full time anymore! Come to think of it, my grand kids have also been begging me to serve as a nurse at a week of camp when they go. It may be a wise thing for me to keep this license even if I’m not utilizing it full time.”

She was smiling so big from ear to ear, and even began to giggle as we prayed together. Shaking her head afterwards she said, “I don’t know why I assumed I would have to give up my license to pursue this other thing that God is asking me to do. I just did…”

In discussing it a bit more, we discovered that she felt that in order for God to think she was serious about following this other call, she would need to give up the license, to prove it. I said, “God already knows your heart. He knows if you’re serious about following this other call, with or without giving up your license.”

After we prayed together for God’s blessing on her new endeavor, she was practically skipping down the aisle back to her seat, she was so happy. It was like a load of bricks had been lifted off of her shoulders.

When I got home that night and told my husband about this encounter at the altar he said to me, “Some people mistakenly believe that literally everything with God or following God’s will has to be hard.”

He was right.

This line of thinking is similar to when people think serving God always has to be serious…and church isn’t supposed to be fun…and if you are truly sold out to God you will poor and starving.

It’s simply not true. Misery is not synonymous with Christianity. There’s a common assumption, and sometimes it’s even preached from the pulpit, that if your life isn’t hard, you must not be doing Christianity right. The idea is that to follow Jesus is to suffer constantly, struggle endlessly, and live perpetually under pressure. While Jesus did say, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33), He didn’t say trouble would define every moment of your life. He also said, “Take heart! I have overcome the world.”

There are times as we live surrendered lives before God that we will all go through serious times…not fun times…and even times of poverty. But that doesn’t mean that we will live that way 100% of the time, or that everything God asks you to do will always be hard. The Christian life, and life itself — is already hard enough without piling more hardness on than we need to.

Christianity is not a promise of a life of ease. There will be hard days, and sometimes long, difficult seasons. But that’s not the whole story. Following Jesus isn’t just one thing. It means walking through valleys and sometimes even the shadow of death, but it also involves resting by still waters. It means carrying a cross but it also means wearing a crown.

Don’t walk in misplaced guilt and miss the blessings of God in your life. Enjoy the good things God has brought into your life. Savor the moments of joy. Hard moments are part of your story, but happy ones are too.

This is a short but sweet post today, but I feel like it’s important for people to know…while serving God is sometimes hard, it’s not always. Don’t create problems and heartache for yourself that you were never intended to have. Don’t put burdens on your back than you were never intended to bear. Life is so much better when you realize this truth.