Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Circumstances

My basic theology is, "Life is often crappy. Better to go through things with God than alone." In John 16:33, Jesus said, "I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” Jesus said that we will have trials and sorrows. He did not say that on earth, we would overcome all unpleasant circumstances. We go through them knowing that He has overcome this world, and in the end, everything will turn out under His authority.

In the story of David & Goliath, we are often encouraged to see ourselves as David, fiercely slaying the enormous enemy with our faith. But recently, I heard a preacher remind us who we are in that story: we are the Israelites. We cower before our enemy, and we will not send anyone forward to fight him, despite all the armor and weapons we have assembled. Each day when he taunts us, we run away. We cannot defeat the things that come against us on our own; we need a champion. That champion is Jesus. He looked at our sin and guilt and defeated them. We charge after him into battle, but we are not Christ. We are the Israelites. Christ overcame the world, and we follow Him into victory, through our trials and sorrows. We do not skip over suffering, the same way that Christ did not use His divinity to trump pain and sorrow.

But He is peace. How often do we look to our circumstances and just want them to go away? Is it enough for us that He is our peace? In our journey to become more like Jesus, we renew our minds--we change our thinking to be more like His. I think simple things are very profound with Him, things we would rather overlook as easy assumptions. Things like, God is good; God loves me; I sin; Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. These are the graduate school of Christianity as well as the basic building blocks. There is no lesson that concludes, "And now your life will be easy and super great." But God is sufficient, sovereign, and more than we could hope or ask for.

In Jesus' day, people were very disappointed in their Messiah, because He failed to do the one thing they wanted: overthrow Rome. Are you also disappointed in Jesus?

No comments: