2. The Big Picture

I wrote last week about how the Devil’s potluck is a nasty downhill affair, standing out among events by how easy it is to attend. It is the ultimate “come as you are and not as you should have been” event. Bring nothing but what you won’t let go of. Easy.

However, like everything else the enemy does, it is deceitful. It is easy to get to, a thing you can simply relax into—but it is not easy in any other way. The reality is that it is not easy at all to be there in that joyless and suffocating place.

If you have ever had to work to lose weight, you may have heard the phrase “choose your hard.” That is a great little phrase because it expresses something that the human mind and heart in a state of discomfort does not want to believe—that there is no easy path. There will be difficulty, and it is simply a matter of choosing what kind of difficulty you prefer. It is hard right now to say “No” to dessert, but it is much easier to be a person who is able to run up a flight of stairs. It is hard to discipline yourself to lose weight, and it is hard to be fat. Both things are hard—but the one can be done without the appearance of initial difficulty, and the other puts all the difficulty up front where it scares us. So when you have to choose your hard, what that usually means is you have to think of your decisions in light of a bigger frame. You have to connect in your own mind the bad eating habits with the discomfort you experience at other times. What are the long term consequences of doing what appears right now to be the easiest path? Difficulty, mess, and struggle, that’s what.

You may have heard yourself say (about some Christian command) “This is too hard!” It can feel like an impossibly hard thing to ask for forgiveness, to extend forgiveness, to continue to do your duties when you feel like quitting, to simply pick up your Bible and read it. But this is the secret—our flesh wants us to believe that it would be easier to just bear the guilt, easier to resent, easier to wrong our children through our own self-indulgence, easier to just sit and scroll on your phone instead of partaking in words of life. But none of those things have anything easy about them, ultimately.

If you were stranded on an island, and in order to eat you needed to work—go forage for berries or hunt or fish or try to set traps—that would be hard. In some ways just sitting and starving to death would be easier. But also, as I hope you can see, starving to death is not really easier than thriving.

The Christian life is one that is shot through with the big picture. We trust the Lord for the big picture. We trust Him that the little obediences of today are part of that. We trust Him that He knows what He is doing, that the One who made the world understands what ought to be done in it by His people. We trust Him that His way is the better way. And the thing is, the more we obey Him today, and now, and immediately—the more joyous and free we are. There is nothing long-term that is easy about disobedience. There is also something truly, wildly, deeply easy about the yoke of the Lord.

You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Ps. 16:11)

The path of life is not one the flesh slides down like a waterslide. It is a path that requires death to self, self-control, and obedience. So who will show us the way? Well, who led us through death to life in the first place? The One in whose presence is fullness of joy. He knows what it is to truly be alive, to truly know joy. The Devil invites us to easy things that we might hardly live. Christ invites us to hard things that we might live abundantly.

Heavenly Father, I ask that this week You would make each of us look to the big picture. Give us hearts that hunger after ultimate joy and not temporary ease. Give us eyes to see where we could sweeten our lives with quick obedience. We thank You for the gift of Your Son, the One who has gladly shown us the way. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Rachel Jankovic
August 2026