Nearly everything we celebrate in life is rooted in overcoming conflict. Sports exist because there is an opponent. Business is built on risk, pressure, and competition. Progress, personal, cultural, and spiritual, comes through resistance. Even the stories that move us most are not about comfort, but about endurance, sacrifice, and victory forged in difficulty.
And yet, despite being wired to admire conflict overcome, something deep inside me still longs for comfort over confrontation. I want affirmation without fire, growth without resistance, peace without the wilderness. That desire runs directly against how life actually works and against how God works. Jesus is baptized. Heaven opens. The Father affirms Him: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” And immediately, without pause, the Spirit drives Him into the wilderness. Not into celebration. Not into rest. Into hunger. Isolation. Temptation. Direct conflict with Satan.
That is unsettling if my view of God is comfort first. But it makes perfect sense if conflict is not a detour from purpose, but the purpose. Jesus was not sent into the world to avoid battle but to enter it fully and decisively. His affirmation was not a reward; it was a commissioning. This exposes my flawed assumptions about God and difficulty. I often imagine that obedience should lead to ease, that faithfulness should result in protection from hardship. But Scripture paints the opposite picture. Affirmation precedes testing. Calling leads to conflict. Love does not remove the wilderness; it sends us into it, equipped.
Our culture dreams of success for what it promises: wealth, comfort, recognition, control. But that is not what we are promised. We are promised purpose. We are promised presence. We are promised victory, but not the absence of battle. Conflict, then, is not something to escape. It is something to accept, engage, and endure. We are here to build God’s kingdom, and kingdoms are not built without resistance. Sin must be confronted. Truth must be defended. Love must be practiced when it costs us something.
The victory is already assured, but the battles are still real. And we are not sent into them alone. We are sent with power, with love, and with discipline. Not for comfort, but for faithfulness. Maybe the real question is not why God allows conflict, but why I keep hoping for a life without it, when everything I value most has always required overcoming it.
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