No shortcuts

“My prayer is not that You take them out of the world but that You protect them from the evil one.” John 17:15
I love reading John 17. It’s Jesus talking to His Father. He says a lot of interesting things in this chapter, but this verse grabbed me as I was reading it.
At this point Jesus knows that He will be taken away, and the disciples’ faith is still fragile. He prays that God would protect them and lead them in the light of salvation.
Note what Jesus specifically doesn’t pray for. He deliberately says, ‘I don’t want them to be taken out of the world’. Think about it: if everyone was instantly whisked away to heaven as soon as they believed, there would be no salt and light in the world, no witness of God, and no-one else could be shown the way to salvation. Similarly, that witness is made ineffective when Christians keep to themselves, living monastically, never venturing out into the world. Even in our society this is easy to do: only having Christian friends and our leisure time spent only doing Christian things. We are in this world for a reason.
So, there are no shortcuts in life. As Christians, we will stand out from the masses, and we will face ridicule. But we will be divinely protected. “God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear” (1 Cor. 10:13). Nothing can happen to us that God hasn’t allowed.