It’s Not What Happens in Life – It’s How You React That Matters
I have been fired from 4 jobs since I became a Christian. The first time it happened, my employer framed it as “not renewing my contract.” The second & third occurrences were “budget cuts.” The last time was the result of an ugly outburst stemming from my refusal to do something that I thought was unethical.
The issue here is not the firings per se, but rather my reaction to each event. These events occurred over a span of 16 years. During the time of the first incident, I called a contract attorney to advise me of my rights. After the last incident in which my boss flew into a rage and fired me on the spot, I smiled and said “God bless you”, gathered my things and chose not to gossip about it or try to vindicate myself.
By choosing to keep my mouth shut, I was able to clearly see God’s hand in directing my steps. My choice to keep it to myself also softened my heart and enabled me to forgive.
A Cross and A Yoke
Our human desire is to avoid suffering at all costs. We also demand immediate vindication when wronged. But for all of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus Christ, there is this issue of covenant integrity.
This church age covenant with God carries with it a pledge to deny ourselves. As a partner with God, I am told to deny all wrong desires that hinder God’s purpose for my life.
When Jesus asked us to take up our cross and follow him, he was not being poetic. When he asked us to take his yoke upon us and learn from him, the Lord was showing us that as we accept the burdens, adversities, and realities of evil that exist in this world – and respond with Biblical doctrine – we would be able to live a life of integrity.
Since our learning will extend beyond this temporal life, we are to exercise our will in line with doctrine and react to life’s challenges in ways that are mostly counter intuitive and require positive volition.
The Nature of the Cross
The true cross is not a shiny trinket to be worn around our necks. It cost Christ in blood, sweat and tears. It was a 6 hour struggle of cosmic proportion during which his body, soul and spirit suffered.
Corpus Hypercubis by Salvador Dali
Lambert Dolphin has written a provocative piece on exactly what happened on the cross in space-time:
When contemplating what really took place on the cross in the divine transaction between God the Father and God the Son, we must not think of the sufferings of Christ, terrible as they were (beyond our comprehension), as if they were constrained to a “mere” (endurable) three hours of absolute time.
Human beings are basically spirits, and spirits are connected to the eternal dimension. Jesus was not like us in another sense: He had known no sin and suffered the additional revulsion and destruction of being changed from a perfect man into a loathsome, repulsive creature God could not look upon. He became sin by absorbing evil into his own person.
In Authentic Christianity, Ray Stedman makes note of the phrase “the Lamb that was slain from before the creation of the world”:
Now the cross occurred at a precise moment of history. We know when the Lamb of God was slain. But the Bible says it occurred before the foundation of the world. How can a historical event which occurred at a certain spot on earth, in the biblical reckoning be said to have occurred before the earth was even made?
The passage does not say that the Lamb was foreordained to be slain before the foundation of the world, but it says he was actually slain then. Surely it means that the cross was an eternal event, taking place both in time and eternity. In time, it is long past; in eternity, it forever occurs.
Another profound result of the atonement is articulated by Arthur Custance in Time and Eternity: Creation and the Theory of Relativity:
God strikes from the record those occasions of failure and disobedience and judgment which eternity might have otherwise recorded to the discredit of each one of us, that even the times which occupied them are eliminated also, as though they had never been.
It is as though God would never give to our enemies or to Satan the opportunity of asking what were we then doing. There will be no “thens” except those which have been redeemed and for which we will gladly render an account.
The wasted times will not be on record to bear witness against us; they will have ceased to exist. But they will not merely have been removed out of hand they will have been purchased.
There are times which we can redeem (Ephesians 5:16), but those which we cannot redeem, the Lord will have redeemed for us.
The Ascension of Christ - Salvador Dali
Spiritual Maturity & Self Esteem
The way to achieve the spiritual maturity and self-esteem made possible by the cross of Christ is through self-denial. Self-denial is not something we can accomplish on our own, in our natural strength. It can only be achieved through the knowledge of and obedience to God’s Word (Biblical doctrine) by the power of the Holy Spirit.
On the way to developing spiritual maturity, you will have to resist the urge to assassinate someone’s character. You will have to struggle against trying to vindicate yourself. You won’t demean and belittle people because they don’t share your politics. You won’t try to retaliate against your boss because she fired you. You learn how to cast your care upon God; the ultimate vindicator of those who love him.
Spiritual maturity is a grace entitlement that is settled and established in the plan of God and put on display in a culture that has no place for divine viewpoint.
As I mature in my Christian walk, I develop a spiritual self-esteem rooted in joy and happiness. Bible doctrine makes me aware of who I am in Christ, helps me accept my covenant responsibilities and develops an inner sense of destiny.
It will cost you something when you take your cross and follow the Lord. But, in an age of negative volition, the life that pleases God will be a life of integrity, substance, peace and joy that will stretch out into the ages to come.
