~Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)
Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
~paul, The Least of The Apostles, in 2 Corinthians 4
Oh beloved, it is true. We will face the tests and trials of this life. Even so, many of us have an advantage. For the beauty is, for those of us with ears to hear and eyes to see, that the trials of this place are not really relevant. Well, they are relevant. But they are not about us.
All along the way, we are tempted to buy into what is happening to us. We look at the physical. We look at the failure of our flesh. We see things falling apart around us, and we know all of it is real. We just miss the point of what the failures show us.
Physical death bares its teeth to us daily.
Circumstances push down on us like a mountain.
Disease tears away at our comfort.
Finances are never stable.
Politics never keep their promises.
Our mistakes mount.
Our feelings are fleeting.
Our lives seem to be draining away.
Even so, all of this is the very best kind of news. It is actually good news in a double kind of way. It brings us to a place where we can (read should) take advantage of our situation in a way we never could have, in the absence of challenges to our faith.
Firstly, in seeing the difficulty of life and our continuous failures, we become re-convinced of the hardest of the good truths of the Good News. The preamble to the whole story is that we must become utterly convinced that we have no part in bringing the Good News about, other than coming to a place of acceptance that it is true. Any of our actions, or attempts at entering into His Grace and the graces that go along with Him, have nothing to do with our ability to control ourselves, our circumstances, our finances, our economies, our governments, or our world.
This first part of the Good News is often forgotten, but once this part of our pride gets out of the way, it is fairly acceptable. We basically get that we are not good enough and that we have been enslaved to sin. However, our pride goes much deeper. We have been enslaved to ourselves, and this must be rooted out as well.
But the second part. The part about the problems not being about us…
We know that we face death daily in this sphere, we know that our circumstances are difficult, and we know that we are fallen. But why are these things true? If the universe has a meaning and eternity is real (we all know that both are), what is going on here?
We are still slaves.
This is where our pride really needs to be rooted out. For part of us thinks that the bad things that continue to happen to us in this sphere are because we are bad. And further, we often believe that we deserve some sort of additional punishment beyond the wrath poured out on Jesus.
Stay with this fool, as he tries to share the heart of G_d.
As believers, we are still slaves. But we are no longer slaves to the world, or to sin, or to the horrible taskmaster of self. We are a different kind of slave. We have been bought out of those marketplaces. And, to affirm the purity of the deal, at the moment of us being bought out those places, we were given a choice. We could go anywhere we wanted. We were free. No limits. No constraints.
Hold on. Almost there. Almost to the reason why the horrible circumstances of life are not about us – and why they are actually good news…
So, we were given a choice by the Master who had set us free. He says, “Go child. You are free. Do as you please. Go and enjoy the freedom for which you have been set free.” And yet, something within us knows, just knows, that the freedom we are being given is something we cannot handle alone. If we go away from the Master who has bought our freedom, we will simply end up back in the rebellion that yoked us with bondage in the first place.
“No Father. I would like to stay. May I?”
“Everything will be different if you do, My son. Everything.”
“What do You want?”
He says, “Everything. You will be attached to My house. Literally. Your ego will be dealt a mortal blow. You will have no direction to your own life. It will now be My Life and Purpose, Lived out through you. Every moment, and every circumstance will be about My Great Love, and your life making Me Famous.”
And something in us realizes that it is even deeper than this…
“Yes child. You will no longer have the right believe anything other than the Truth. You are utterly forgiven. You are completely accepted. You are totally free. You are hyper-victorious. You are in Me, and I AM in you. This means that the circumstances and failures which used to bother you so much, now have nothing to do with you. They only continue as opportunities for Me to showcase My Power and Love and in your Life. You will be My Slave. And, I WILL have My Way with you.”
We are a bit confused, but He gently says to us, “Come slave. Taste and see.”
And so we do. We come. And we die.
But suddenly, death is no longer the something we have always been afraid of. No, we see that the death to that within us, that would make everything about us, actually sets us more free than we could have ever imagined. With the illusion that we ever had any control now gone, our eyes are able to see reality.
Can we see it?
A slave of G_d has a tremendous advantage. Instead of living life through the tiny and crushing lens of time and self, we now Live it through His Eternal Eyes. The things we would have seen as bad, are now truly seen within their context. Evil is limited. It is already dying – and its huffing and puffing has very, very little to do with what our Lives are now about.
So beloved, are you still living in the lie that you could work your way into His graces if you could just overcome your circumstances? Are you playing with the even deeper lie that your circumstances are about you? Tonight is your night to remember that you are a completely different kind of slave – with a Completely Different Master.
Repent, and believe The Gospel of your Salvation!
