O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’” – Luke 13:34-35
I repeat myself a lot, and sometimes I contradict
myself. Truth is not always clear to
me. It’s a struggle, one that has been
going on for six decades and yet continues.
If I seem particularly confused the last few days years, it’s
nothing new.
On the one hand, I don’t want to accept whatever the devil throws
at me. The Psalms are replete with pleas
not to let enemies have the upper hand and be able to gloat over the fallen
condition of the righteous. There’s a
large cohort in Christianity that focuses on health, wealth and externally
victorious living. This approach is
derived largely from God’s relationship with Israel as depicted in the Old
Testament. If we trust and obey, God
will bless, protect, and prosper us in a way that is obvious to everyone. There’s also New Testament support for
divine healing and provision, and I don’t deny that.
What, though, are we to think when something attacks
us? This happens. We’re minding our own business and disaster
strikes. Christians lose their
houses. They get sick. Their marriages fall apart. They are struck by natural disasters. Their children are killed or
disabled in accidents or have health problems.
Well, Kenneth Copeland will tell you, you just need more faith. You weren’t “faithing” hard enough. I like Brother Copeland. I even plan to go see him when he’s in
Branson in a couple of weeks. But
sometimes the way the Word of Faith boys talk, faith sounds a lot like a lot of
work. I get aggravated because I don’t have the
time, the energy, the inclination, or the intelligence to “faith” against
everything that might come my way, and I really don’t think it is my job to
control the weather and the stock market and the real estate market and the
national economy and what goes on in Washington or what the Iranians are doing
and all that other stuff. In other
words, I’m not God. There are times when
I get to thinking I would like to try God’s job but only for about five
minutes. I doubt I could handle it that
long, certainly not any longer.
I think it is less about rebuking the devil than about
resisting the devil. There’s a big
difference. There’s a place for rebuking
the devil. Suppose you as a Christian
have a friend or acquaintance who is pursuing a destructive lifestyle – whether
it’s a workaholic or an alcoholic, too ambitious, too lazy, gluttonous, envious,
greedy, whatever it may be. This person
may well be under attack by demonic influences.
It may be appropriate to rebuke “the spirit of fear” or something as if
one were addressing an entity with a personality. I leave that up to the leading of the Holy
Spirit in a particular situation.
Resisting the devil is always appropriate because that
applies directly to me. By what I allow
myself to think about, to contemplate, to accept, to reject, to say, and to act
upon, I either resist the devil or surrender to the devil. This is a fight. It’s warfare.
First, let us consider what Jesus says above as He looks
over His beloved city of Jerusalem and mourns for the fate she has chosen. The Lord wants to protect us. He wants our permission to protect us. He needs our permission because He has given
a free will.
Next, hear James 4:6-7, “… God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist
the devil, and he will flee from you.”
Third, I think this is where faith mostly applies. We go deliberately and intentionally to God
and surrender ourselves to Him and to His will.
Those of us who are Christians have already accepted the finished work
of Christ for the forgiveness of our sins, acknowledging our need for and trust
in the atonement. If we are not in
Christ and have not turned ourselves in and asked for the Lord’s forgiveness
and protection, there are a lot of second causes. We are vulnerable to all of the enemy’s
attacks. We are under his law, his
regime, and his authority. If we are in
Christ there need not be any second causes.
Once we surrender our wills to the Lord and accept His offer
“to gather us under His wings”, everything that comes to us, comes through
Him. If He does not want it to affect
us, it does not. If we can believe that,
if we can trust God to do what He explicitly says He will do, we enter the rest
and peace of God.
So, anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing lately before I go
to bed and when I first get up in the morning, just giving myself up to the
Lord. He knows I can’t do it without a
lot of help, and I’m asking for that, too.
We’ll see how well I maintain the first time something breaks. But, if He doesn’t want it to break, it won’t
break. Faith! Amen?
3 comments:
Well, Kenneth Copeland will tell you, you just need more faith. You weren’t “faithing” hard enough.
I loathe this way of thinking. One of the implications of living in a world of free will is that it must be possible for bad things to happen to good people. If every person who prayed hard enough were always spared from every woe and sorrow, there would be no free will, nor would it be possible for there to be any mystery.
Further, it cannot but compound the suffering of those who are troubled, potentially heaping a mountain of unnecessary guilt on top of everything else that must be endured. It heaps condemnation upon the innocent by offering up their suffering as proof of their evil. It is ultimately coldhearted and lacking in compassion: "Your house burned down? Gosh, you must have made God angry somehow." "Your family killed by a drunk driver? What did you do to deserve that? Must not have prayed enough."
It has been my experience, over and over again, that hardship, pain, and suffering, when given over to God, contain hidden blessings and opportunities to open our hearts further to God's will. When things are good, as they usually are, I do try to remember to be thankful as much as possible. But it is when I pour out my sorrows, in pain, suffering or anguish, that I am most likely to be tender enough to ask for God's guidance, and actually listen for an answer.
Hardship is a grace - if we allow it to be.
If we can believe that, if we can trust God to do what He explicitly says He will do, we enter the rest and peace of God.
Good post Mush...
and what julie said, especially this..It has been my experience, over and over again, that hardship, pain, and suffering, when given over to God, contain hidden blessings and opportunities to open our hearts further to God's will.
I have faith that God will save my soul, anything physical is at risk and (this is easy to say but hard to practice) relatively unimportant.
All the horrible in the world is the price of freedom.
Amen, Julie.
Thanks, John.
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