Somewhere along the way our understanding has been skewed. What we think Christianity should look like and what it really is are two different things. I think a lot of times we get caught up in the religious dos and don’t s and forget we’re in a relationship with Christ. We worry more of how it looks on the outside than what it is in itself and how it can change our lives. In this I think several have fallen into the trap of thinking being in a relationship with Christ needs to be really hard and that we’re suppose to suffer. In reality we’ve gone from death to life and if that’s not reason enough to celebrate, knowing Christ on a close, personal, intimate level should bring at least a little joy to our lives. In this I’m not saying we won’t suffer or have to endure hardships because, lets face it, we live in a fallen world and horrible things happen every day. We’ve been redeemed, yes, but we still have to live with the consequences of our fallen flesh. The difference is that now we have reason to look beyond our own sufferings. We have an undying hope that WILL see us through those difficult times and a gracious Father who understands what we’re going through and won’t give us more than we can handle.
God has shown me a lot of this through-out this year. He’s taken me through difficult times but He’s also taken me through incredible times of joy. One of the biggest things I’ve realized is how little all this even matters if we’re not following Jesus with everything in us. We are incapable of the simplest things without Jesus working in us and until we come back to the simplicity of Christ and what He’s done we aren’t going to get very far.
I was reading God’s Pursuit of Man by A.W. Tozer today and this little bit kind of goes along with the point I’m trying to make.
The truth is God has never planned that His children should live forever stretched upon a cross. Christ Himself endured His cross for only six hours. When the cross had done it’s work life entered and took over. ” Therefore God has highly exulted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name” (Philippians 2:9).
His joyful resurrection followed hard upon His joyless crucifixion. But the first had to come before the second. The life that halts short of the cross is but a fugitive condemned thing, doomed at last to be lost beyond recovery. That life which goes to the cross and loses itself there to rise again with Christ is a divine and deathless treasure. Over it death hath no more dominion. Whoever refuses to bring his old life to the cross is but trying to cheat death, and no matter how hard we may struggle against it, he is nevertheless fated to lose his life at last. The man who takes his cross and follows Christ will soon find that his direction is away from the sepulcher. Death is behind him and a joyous and increasing life before. His days will be marked henceforth not by ecclesiastical gloom, the churchyard, the hollow tone, the black robe (which are all but the cerements of a dead church) but ” joy that is inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8).
Real faith must aways mean more than passive acceptance. It dare mean nothing less than surrender of our doomed Adam-life to a merciful end upon the cross. That is, we won God’s just sentence against our evil flesh and admit His right to end its unlovely career. We reckon ourselves to have been crucified with Christ and to have risen again to newness of life. Where such faith is, God will always work in line with our reckoning. Then begins the divine conquest of our lives. This God accomplishes by an effective seizing upon, a sharp but love-impelled invasion of our natures. When He has overpowered our resistance He binds us with the cords of love and draws us to Himself. There, “faint with His loveliness” we lie conquered thanking God again and again for the blessed conquest. There, with moral sanity restored, we lift up our eyes and bless the Most High God. Then we go forth in faith to apprehend that for which we were first apprehended of God.
A.W. Tozer
