One of my wife’s sisters has had a fairly wretched go at life; we noticed that whenever we talked about her we’d start out by saying: “She’s a Christian, but…” and then go on to list all of the ishy stuff she’d been involved with/sins she’d been committing.

We realized that we were doing this and asked ourselves the question: Can we really say that someone is a “Christian, but…”? In answering this question we were required to take a good long look at scripture to try to understand what a “Victorious Christian Life” looks like.

We realized that one of the best living examples of a “Victorious Christian Life” was the one being lived out in front of us by Laurie’s sister. It’s full of pain and suffering, it’s full of sin and struggle and it ends with death and resurrection.

A lot of my clients think about heaven a lot. So would you if your body disobeyed, if your hand didn’t do what you told it to, if your bowels moved without your permission. I’m reminded when talking about heaven how I’m so very little less disabled then they are and how suffering is something we should hold in common as human beings and stop trying to convince ourselves that it isn’t part of our destiny as human beings, Christian or not.