Radical????

I don't really think this is radical but reading the book by David Platt has started me thinking and seriously considering the culture I live in versus Biblical orthopraxy. Even while we have had a house for sale in Atlanta for the past two years I have been house looking. For some reason when we initially left atlanta I had a whole other scenario in my mind. I don't if it was the american culture influence that says God wants to bless me and I get to decide what that looks like or the cliche that God's best for me means a bigger and better house, car, life, etc. If you really look at the theology of the new testament, that's no where in there. Instead, it's filled with suffering, taking up your cross daily, dying to really live.....you get the picture. This has been a lesson that the Lord has been teaching me over these past two years. I think that Jesus' promises of asking God for what you need and if we can give good gifts to our children while being evil then how much more does God want to give good gifts to us, we as a culture have turned that into meaning living a life of luxury and comfort. Of course when you look at parenting your own kids there are so many times when the truly best thing for them is not the easiest most comfortable thing. Usually it's the exact opposite. We know that helping them work through trials instead of saving the day for them is really better. I guess it's just that when we are the little kids in the situation and we are looking at what seem like insurmountable odds or what everybody else has or what we think are bigger than life problems, we don't want the character building because it's so much harder. We just want God to fix it.
I guess what I'm getting at is what kind of pain or suffering are we willing to walk through because that's where God is leading? What I tend to think is that the things we consider to be suffering in our american culture of comfort and instant access are hardly anything close to suffering at all, they are actually blessing.