A revelation recently came upon me concerning the seemingly endless process of being wounded, being brought into the wound, and being restored. What I mean by "endless process" is that if you think about it, people will never stop being harsh, unforgiving, merciless creatures. Or put it this way; you have a whole lifetime ahead of you and if Christ has been recently restoring you from some pain, it may have crossed your mind that whatever hurt you so bad that you needed the power of the Holy Spirit to recover from it, may happen again. You may have discovered that wounds from your childhood that have changed your life for the worse are only constrained to that time, and more wounding had happened after that and there is probably more wounding to follow.
So how can we ever live abundant life? How can we ever be restored if we'll just get slapped back down into wounding again? Is there ever a time that the past can be just that, and have no bearing on your future?
There are a couple of directions that I'd like to come at this with but I'll start by answering this question with a preliminary question: Which do you feel is more powerful, the wound or Jesus?
Now I know you know the answer to that question, but how do you feel in response to that question? Do you feel like every prayer you've ever offered to the Lord about forgiving someone who betrayed you or overcoming a fear of a certain type of person has fallen back on the floor, unanswered. Perhaps you nobly referred back to the book of Job and said, "Look at what God allowed Job to go through." acknowledging the providential purposes of God and touching off your deepest doubts with well-meaning but useless spiritual ascents.
You see, Jesus has more power than your wound, and in reality He healed your wound on the cross, long before the wound even occurred. That statement isn't meant just to lay in the crypts of theology though, it is a challenge to your faith and whether you believe it or not.
That's just one way I'd like to talk about this. It is a good introduction, however, because you
CAN NOT move further in this blog or even think about healing in general without the bare requirement of faith in God's ability, and willingness to do it.
As for how God heals your wound that is another matter entirely which I don't have the time to work on right now. But suppose you've been healed or restored. And you just came out of a time in your life that was dominated by a proclivity to choose sin over God because you felt you didn't have any choice. And now the pain of unforgiveness, personal wounding, assault on your character (whatever it may be) is at your door again. What do we do?
First, I'd like to build establish this idea from a foundation of truth. You are a King AND a Priest in God's Kingdom. (Rev. 5:10) You are redeemed from sin (Eph. 1:7) and you have power!!! (Acts 1:8) The last one I'd like to emphasize the most. The power of God is at work IN you!! (Phil. 2:13) All these things considered, and hopefully existing as a full blown reality in your life, you are now able to engage a potentially wounding situation and turn it into a moment when God's power can be realized, established and His Kingdom restored to the Earth. You, and Me... we have this great responsibility, this terrifying opportunity to be an ambassador and warrior of the Kingdom of God. Problems inevitably are coming our way. I don't care who you are at this moment, in the days to come, you will have hardship. That is undeniable, inescapable... whatever... it must happen! And when it does... how will you react? Will you retreat into the wound you're trying to heal? Will you activate the power of the flesh (by trusting in it's methods and results)? Or will you stand against it and hand Satan his attempt to wound you right back to him, saying, "No thank you, I'm clean because of the word Jesus has spoken to me." (John 15:3) and give him a little smile.
You see, we're called to overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:21) I know in the context, Paul is talking about our actions, but I'd like to point out that this ideology applies on the broadest spectrum possible. Consider the cross! God, overcame evil, the pure evil of sin with His good. Take that idea to whatever level you'd like to, it works on every one! But here is my point, you are not called to take a beating for the devil and smile, YOU ARE CALLED TO MAKE SATAN FALL LIKE LIGHTNING FROM HEAVEN!
Let me ask you this, what is your role in the kingdom? Are you a whipping boy for other people, Satan, God and most of all yourself? I only know how that goes because I've lived it but I'd like to say please show me this in scripture. Show me, just once where it says that the purpose of our lives as followers of Christ, necessitates our crushed broken attitudes and downcast faces instead of living as people of destiny.
Two examples: Recently, someone in authority over me was demeaning my character. They were talking to me like I was stupid and coincidentally I struggle with the lie that I'm a stupid, incapable, immature kid. Honestly, when people go there, my gut reaction is simply to withdraw.
"Nope. This is getting too serious and I can't let this wound go any deeper. They're touching on a place that I just can't deal with, I'm afraid of what might happen or how I might react."
etc.
The plot twist was when I chose not to be afraid anymore. After that, I chose not to agree with what they were saying and do what my fears were telling me. Not only that, I disagreed with who they were saying and believing they were and I assigned the power of God and the dignity back to them which Satan was trying to steal from them right there. Do you know how badly the devil lost at that moment?
Not only did he not wound me, but he failed to activate and empower the wounding of someone else.
The other example could simply be said that someone was tyrannically ranting at me and instead of cowering and closing up while they were doing (my fear being that I didn't want them to get any angrier, and I myself didn't want to get angry and have my sin take over like theirs was) I then denied every false claim they were making, calmly, respectfully, and offered to pray right there.
These examples aren't here so you can know how great I am, I'm trying to communicate a moment of remarkable success in my life for your benefit, that isn't by my power, but the power of God. If you've read all I've said, it's plainly in the Bible anyway. On top of that, I don't want to be an open throbbing wound my whole life, that's not what God died for and that's not how the kingdom of God works. If Satan is being aggressive, YOU CAN BE AGGRESSIVE. I mean to say that you can be aggressively loving, humble and you can proactively defend the truth of God not just in the political arena, or in the philosophical arena, but in your personal arena when things start getting crazy and Satan tries to rule stuff that's not his.
"the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force." (Matt. 11:12) Do you now see what this means? Jesus isn't priming the disciples to take on the Roman army. If that was his intention then what a fail! No, this means that evil will take over, gladly, if you sit back and agree with it until you live a life of defeat and consistent dismay. And the Kingdom of Heaven needs warriors of love, not people who look at sin and say, "Well, there goes the neighborhood!" No!!! It's your responsibility!!!! Don't let Satan take burn you out, insult you, tear down your character and convince you that there's nothing you can do about it. Fight back.... the way Jesus intended: With loving, foot washing, joy, courageous hope in others, unrelenting faith in the Father and his plan, and by atmosphere transforming, evil shattering self sacrifice, to the point of death.
(Note: There's a caution I carried, throughout the writing of this entry to avoid the danger of triumphalism, meaning, I didn't want to paint an unrealistic picture of the life Jesus intended. People (preachers especially) tend to paint a redeemed life as being untouchable and free from any pain. That's not what I hope to communicate, pain is in the process, but many times pain can be transformed into goodness in that crucial moment, often referred to as the "Kairos" moment, which is a moment that doesn't rely on actual time, but is a time, if that makes sense. Triumphalism in its practice also tends to have disinterest or disregard for other viewpoints, concerns and commonly carries the freight of an agenda. It's not observant or cautious, and if this blog is properly understood, it can lead to the most observant and most cautious ways to deal with the pains and woundings of life, not only by coming out unscathed, but with more people better off than they would have been before, while evil intentions were behind it the whole time. The ultimate redemption: an evil will leading to an evil action hoping for destruction, but being intercepted, received with love, engaged, not run from and producing a Godly fruit. Evil, producing Godly fruit. That's right. It can happen. Hallelujah.)
No comments:
Post a Comment