Mueller On: What's fair?

I have an ever-present tendency to ask God the question, "Why Me?" These words can be heard rolling off the tip of my tongue on a fairly regular basis. This is because I tend to believe that I don't deserve what is given to me. Maybe because I think I've earned better, maybe
because I think that with the Holy Spirit I should be able to accomplish everything, even the total evasion of temptation.

Currently I am fighting off my old single self. See, I recently got married and so my life has made this drastic change from "man looking for woman" to "man taken: stay away." The problem with this is that I have spent a good part of my life watching every girl that walks by, or as a counselor of mine once referred to it as... "shopping", as so many of us guys do.

I feel like I make great attempts to change this desire in myself. I really want it to change. But no matter the efforts on my part, nothing seems to work. I continue to struggle. I continue to walk into temptation.

I pray to God. I ask him, "Please Father, help me with this, take these desires away from me so that I can respect my wife and fully show her love." But still I fail.

For me, this is the "why" question that continuously lingers: "Why can't I change? Why won't God make things better?" And so I blame God, complaining that it just isn't fair.

Many of us ask these same questions, and many of us have the same response I do. But Christ didn't ask this question when he was put through the hell of the beatings and the crucifiction. Atleast not the same way we do.

We ask it out of a lack of faith and understanding, but I believe that because Christ completely trusted what God was doing, that he asked, "Why have you forsaken me?", out of a desire for things to not have to be resolved in such a way as his sacrifice. He was saying, "Father, I wish it didn't have to be this way". He was showing the world that he was suffering like no other had before him and no other would after him.

What's my point? It's that he was perfect. He didn't deserve the beatings and the maulings. He only deserves our worship and our love. Yet he didn't complain. So I have to ask myself, "Why do I complain?" I'm certainly not perfect. We live in this world filled with sin and so, just as Christ was not held back from the consequences of it, neither shall we be.

Our only choice is to try to live above it as best we can, and understand that we are never going to be able to evade the temptations and pains of sin in this world. If we all begin to treat this situation the way I do at times, asking "Why?" and blaming God for our constant obstacles, we will begin to become bitter. We will forget at times that God is not the One who tempts us, but the One who gives us the Holy Spirit so that we can be set free from the enslavement of sin. He is our protector and He is the One who gives us a way out of every situation. And for this we should thank God and love him with all our hearts, not expecting anything in return.