Even after so many years of being an active part of the New Testament church of Jesus Christ and a surrendered daughter to my understanding of His will and ways, I am still caught off guard at times by the multitude of views Christians have toward God and His character. The one that probably hurts my daughter-heart the most (as it would hurt my heart if someone maligned my earthly father) is when well-meaning and sincere Christians choose to believe it is in God's will for us to suffer sickness, disease, poverty, and even early death... and so many other earthbound tragedies. I believe the Bible clearly lays out that all the aforementioned were under the curse of the law and I think we all agree that Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law.
Does that mean these things never happen to us? Absolutely not. We can't escape the fact that we live in a fallen world. But what it does mean is that when I know something is NOT THE WILL OF GOD, then I can shore up my faith in WHAT IS THE WILL OF GOD which gives me munition for the battle when these things do come. I'm not battling God who some believe orchestrates these things in order to make me stronger. Usually when these things come it is a result of the natural course of this natural world we live in temporarily. The only way I come out stronger on the other side of a battle is if I know how to stand against these things in this world and THAT is what develops my character and deepens my trust in God who is my Provider, my Healer, my Supplier, my Peace, my Righteousness, my Authority, my Shepherd, my Strength, my Grace, my Merciful Redeemer... and on it goes.
Now if I believe these trials of ordinary life come from God, I wouldn't be so inclined to battle them to victory because I would want to glory in them if they came from God and let them run their course and just allow whatever comes to have its way... after all if it's God's will why would I try to stop it? [Side note: I would insert here that if it is the trials of life that automatically make you strong, I'm wondering why we don't have more churches loaded with increasingly very steadfast and mature Christians ... to the contrary... there are the few ... the remnant in the church who are truly full of joy, full of victory in Jesus, full of knowing who they are in Christ and ready to take on any battle that comes their way.]
In my view, this way of thinking exalts itself against the knowledge God has given us in the Bible in order to overcome evil, to overcome sin, to overcome the results of sin, to overcome the god of this world... who has blinded the eyes of unbelievers...
Let's not let him blind our eyes as well.
Let's be diligent to let the ransom that Jesus paid for all mankind to be sufficient for us believing Christians. Our job is to preach the gospel, live right, do good, and be a witness to the glorious personal fellowship we enjoy with our Lord Jesus Christ.
"Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God." 2 Corinthians 10:5
***Deliverance from sin is not deliverance from human nature. There are things in human nature … which the saint has to destroy by neglect…
It is only when God has altered our disposition and we have entered into the experience of sanctification that the fight begins. The warfare is not against sin; we can never fight against sin: Jesus Christ deals with sin in Redemption. The conflict is along the line of turning our natural life into a spiritual life, and this is never done easily...
It is done only by a series of moral choices.
God does not make us holy in the sense of character; He makes us holy in the sense of innocence, and we have to turn that innocence into holy character by a series of moral choices. These choices are continually in antagonism to the entrenchments of our natural life, the things which erect themselves as ramparts against the knowledge of God. We can either go back and make ourselves of no account in the Kingdom of God, or we can determinedly demolish these things and let Jesus bring another son to glory. ***
***excerpts from Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (emphasis mine)
3 comments:
i will have to read this and reread it. it is so very clear what are lives are supposed to be. a life layed down as a sacrifice to our Lord Jesus Christ. it is not so easily done.
this is what more churches should be focusing on. otherwise we are going to have alot of folks right in our churches going to hell thinking everything is alright.
our lives not are lives
Hi marmee:
I heard a profound teaching once from an admired-prophetic-praying Pastor's wife who spoke about how Christians typically separate out our natural life from our spiritual life-- as if they ARE separate. We tend to do it in our thinking/in our human-ness.
But as we allow the Holy Spirit who resides in our own spirits to have more and more ascendendancy over our flesh (and we cast down imagainations...)we live more and more from the 'inside out' rather than the other way around. What a difference this way of thinking/living makes.
It creates a "God inside mindedness" and becomes a way of living (to please God) rather than a Sunday morning situation where we lay aside our wordliness (and what we did the night before)for an hour to go to church and then pick it up our worldliness on the way out the door again and then live pretty much how we "feel like living" the rest of the week.
... again, a series of moral choices.
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