IN THE WORLD YET NOT OF THE WORLD
MARIO D’COUTO
Being in the world and yet not of
it is something that can be a struggle, at least for me and what I mean by that
is in as much as we desire to be good and to do good, God is not going to put a
glass jar over us and say that just because we choose to love Him and follow
Him more closely, that He is going to shield us from the temptations of this
world. To make things clear though, this is not to say that the world in itself
is bad or evil nor are the things found in the world either but how we deal
with it is what will make us or break us. We all have responsibilities and
important things that need our attention. If we are not careful though, our
hearts and minds can be consumed with the task of keeping them afloat. Rather
than centering ourselves in Christ and letting the other elements of our lives
take their rightful place around that center, we can end up shifting our
attention from one important to-do item to another, frantically trying to keep
them all in motion.
It's easy to forget that while
there is a time to work, there is also a time to worship and it is the worship,
the time we spend with God, that provides the serene center to a busy, complex
life. It is so easy to lose focus in life, to lose our center as often times,
the circumstances we face or find ourselves in can conspire to drag our eyes
away from the face of the Saviour, hypnotizing us with the unending sway of our
problems. Lets face it, life is hard and rarely fair. Even when we work
diligently and do what is expected, the daily duties of life often seem to
provide few rewards, not to mention the amount of tasks that can get our minds
pre-occupied and over – worked that we miss to see the big picture. Like for
example, when was the last time your boss and co – workers applauded the fact
that you got to work on time, did your job with a smile and stayed late to
finish an assignment? Well, it rarely happens, if at all it happens. The
problem though is that it is in situations such as these and other such moments
when we are down where the enemy takes advantage of our vulnerability and he
does it in three ways, namely,
Ø
Distraction
Ø
Discouragement
Ø
Doubt
Throughout time immemorial, it
seems that Satan has resorted to the above three tactics to bring down God’s
best and brightest. The underlying strategy is fairly simple: get
people’s eyes off God and on their circumstances. Make them believe that their
‘happiness’ lies in the ‘happenings’ that surround them or send them good news
(the achievements) of somebody else. When they are thoroughly discouraged, tell
them God doesn’t care. Then sit back and let doubt do its work. Coming
to think of it, this seems like a brilliant strategy wherein once the three
deadly “D’s” (distraction, discouragement and doubt) are planted deep in human
hearts, sooner or later, people will destroy themselves, unless if someone
intervenes which is what Our Blessed Lord did.
Satan knows that if we are overly
worried and bogged down by duties, chances are that our hearts will not hear
the Saviour’s call to come. While distractions may not win the battle for our
souls, getting our eyes off of what is important will certainly make us
vulnerable to attack.
When we are distracted,
discouragement is just around the corner. Weariness creeps in as life
overpowers us. It causes us to say and do things we would never consider saying
or doing otherwise. Discouragement breaks down our perspective and our
defenses. Even if we may have completed great things, if we let discouragement
to sink its roots deep within, it can cause us to think that we are useless,
hopeless and abandoned. We see this in the life of prophet Elijah.
Having just won a mighty victory
over the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18), Elijah had been flying high. But when
Jezebel took out a contract on Elijah’s life, the wicked queen’s haughty words
brought the mighty prophet back to earth with a thud. Less than a day after
holy fire fell from heaven, proving once and for all that God is God, Elijah
was running away for his life, leading him to distraction and discouragement
where distractions made him fear and discouragement made him hide.
Discouragement can drain us of all
hope, of all vision, of all our dreams and it certainly was the case for
Elijah. However, in the midst of all this, we find in 1 Kings 19: 4 – 8, the
tenderness of God available to us is our discouragement. When it seemed like
Elijah had hit rock bottom, God sent an angel to bring food to His downhearted
prophet. When we are distracted and discouraged, tired and overwhelmed, there
is no better place to go than our heavenly Father. He alone has what we need.
Doubting God’s love doesn’t
necessarily require tragedy though. It can creep into the everyday part of
one’s life just as insidiously, just as dangerously. It happens when our needs
are ignored or when we are stuck doing all the work or when we may find
ourselves overwhelmed by the pressures of life, while others seem to have it
all fine and sorted. Such doubt in itself is not a sin. It’s simply a thought or
a feeling that springs up almost involuntarily and spontaneously. The problem
comes in when we allow it to sink deep within, that when left unchecked, it can
fester into unbelief and when that happens we are in deep trouble. When we no
longer believe in God’s goodness, when we no longer trust in His care, we end
up running away from the Love we need to live.
Unbelief brought down Judas as he
refused to trust God’s timing. Unbelief hardened Saul’s heart as he closed his
eyes to the righteousness of God’s ways. Unbelief kept the Israelites in the
wilderness for forty years because they questioned God’s ability to lead them
and it was unbelief way back at the beginning of time that opened a doorway of
darkness in a world designed for pure light where Satan insinuated our first
parents into thinking that God did not have their best interest at heart and so
it seems humanity has questioned God’s love ever since.
The good thing is that God isn’t threatened
by our doubts and questions or our fears and our frustrations. He wants us to
trust His love enough to tell Him what we are thinking and feeling. We see this
in the life of King David. He is a marvelous
example of a heart honest and
open before God. The shepherd – boy – turned – king poured out his complaint
before the Lord all through the psalms. In Psalm 62:8, he invites us to do the
same as he writes, “Trust In Him at all times, O people; pour out your
hearts to Him for God is our refuge”, which is why the rougher the day, the
more time we need to spend with our Saviour. Our Blessed Lord Himself said, “Seek
ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be
added unto you” (Matthew 6:33) which in other words meant, “Take care of
My business and I’ll take care of yours. Make room in your heart for Me and
I’ll make room for everything else.”
The plight though is that we are
too afraid or reluctant to let God explode our comfort zone and expand our
capacity for Him; we want a God we can manage, a God who can make us happy but
not enough to make us change. The fact of the mater though is that God is not
on the market in manageable, bargain – size portions. In fact, He is not on the
market in the first place for God is not a
‘thing’ or a
‘commodity’.
He is not looking for buyers; He is looking to buy – you and me. He wants a
people who are sold out to Him, all the way, total liquidation. He is not
willing to barter nor is He looking to please. He has already paid the price.
His Son died on the cross to pay our debt and ransom our souls. This
transaction, however, is never a forced sale.
God is a gentleman and not a robber
baron. He will court us and pursue us but He will never push Himself upon us. He
has given us the freedom to even say
“No” to Him and because of it, we
also have the choice to keep Him in a corner of our lives rather than at the centre.
Author Cynthia Heald explains this in the following way,
“We are as intimate
with God as we choose to be.” The only limitations of God’s presence in our
lives are the limits we set for ourselves – the excuses we set up to avoid
being filled with the presence of God in our lives.
Sometimes we have to slow down in
order to take spiritual inventory and see where we stand before God. Sometimes
we have to realize how empty we are before we are willing to be filled. It is
not enough to spend time with God only when we feel like it. If we want to be
filled with God on a more consistent basis, we have to determine to let
ourselves be stretched, to make room for Him on a daily basis in our lives and
that would mean learning to abandon our emotions as a compass and start
exercising our will, which is to say that it is about not letting our emotions
and feelings get the better of us but rather to make a conscious effort in
making time for God and spending time with Him consistently on a daily basis.
This also includes the fact about not having to wait to become or feel
spiritual in order to spend time with God but rather in making a conscious
decision, the spiritual feelings would eventually come around. Yes, the
struggle will be there but like a patient waking from a long coma, you will
eventually begin to experience a hunger for God like you’d never known before.
Christian author Claire Cloninger
explains it in the following way in her book,
“When God shines through”
where she explains how God takes the broken, scattered pieces of our lives and
turns them into kaleidoscopes which can be seen in the following words
, “For
me, one of the greatest frustrations of walking through the ‘dailiness’
of my life as a Christian is that I don’t always get to see how the bits and
pieces of who I am fit into the big picture of God’s plan. It’s tempting at
times to see my life s a meal here, a meeting there, a carpool, a phone call, a
sack of groceries – all disjointed fragments of mothering in particular.
And yet I know I am called, as
God’s child, to believe by faith that they do add up. That in someway every
single scrap of my life, every step and every struggle, is in the process of
being fitted together into God’s huge and perfect pattern for good.”
From this, we see that instead of
waiting for us to arrive, God shines His light through the fragments we place
in His hands, transforming ‘the disorder into beauty and symmetry’,
splashing the colours of our brokenness like fireworks across the sky. It’s the
experience of sanctification – working hard beside Christ as He does His
transforming work in us. It’s the process of perseverance – keeping on,
pressing on, obeying in the little things and the big things doing the best we
can and then continuing to march on, trusting God to do the rest.
Perseverance isn’t a lot of fun.
Yet it is perseverance that allows God to take our mess and turn them into
miracles. He delights in transforming the pressures of our lives into diamonds
of radiant beauty. But doing all that requires a process, a process that takes
time, a process that is sometimes painful. It’s what St. James wrote in his
letter,
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many
kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not
lacking anything” (James 1: 2 -4) wherein through these words, he is
exhorting us to look beyond the painful surface of what is happening to us to
what God is doing in the midst of it all. Through these words, we see that he
wants us to look past the trials we are facing as they are not something that
is haphazard. The testing of our faith has a purpose. Our trials are directed towards
a glorious end and it would all be worth it if we would only persevere. However
reality is something else since most of us give up at the slightest point of
inconvenience as pastor Charles Swindell notes in his book,
“Growing strong
in the seasons of life”,
“I fear our generation has come dangerously
near the ‘I’m-getting-tired-so-let’s-just-quit’ mentality. And
not just in the spiritual realm. Dieting is a discipline, so we stay fat.
Finishing school is a hassle, so we bail out. Cultivating a close relationship
is painful, so we back off. Getting a book written is demanding, so we stop
short. Working through conflicts in marriage is a tiring struggle, so we walk
away. Sticking with an occupation is tough, so we start looking elsewhere …..
And about the time we are ready to give it up, along comes the Master, who
leans over and whispers: ‘Now keep going, don’t quit. Keep on.’”
When it comes to our spiritual lives,
a lot of us are “all – or – nothing people”. If we aren’t automatically
perfect, we just give up: When Christ – like virtues like patience and kindness
seem hard to come by, we abandon our character development and decide holiness
is for those better equipped. But when we give up, we are giving up on our part
of the partnership. Perseverance is one of our responsibilities in the process
of being changed.
God uses the trials and the
pressures of life to perfect our lives. When we persevere, we become mature and
complete; we suffer no deficiency; we have everything we need. Of course, there
will still be areas in our lives when we struggle. There will still be battles
and we will lose a few now and then. But if we are willing to persevere in the
process, one day, with Christ beside us, we will win the war.
When we surrender our lives to
Christ and entrust our work to Him, we allow Him to do His work. May it not happen that we allow our weaknesses to become a stumbling block in our approach to Him for as alluded to before,
when the evil one reminds us of our past, we need to remind him of his future. It is
important to keep in mind that it is in our weakness that Christ is strong. It
is in our inadequacy that we find Him more than sufficient and it is in our
willingness to be broken that He brings wholeness – more wholeness and
completeness than we ever dreamed could ever be possible as Mother Teresa wrote
in her book,
“Life in the Spirit”,
“Give yourself fully to God. He
will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much
more in His love than in your own weakness.” This, of course, is no excuse
for us to be complacent or to justify our sins and shortcomings but as long as
we truly desire to please God, He looks at our efforts and appreciates it and
will bless us.
All in all, it is our connection to
Christ that helps us maintain the balance between work and worship, in
reminding ourselves that we are in the world, yet not of the world. This is not
to say that we should let our heads get stuck in the clouds and not have our
feet grounded on earth like as though our roles and responsibilities or our
work and family did not matter but rather it is to remind us that no matter how
good we may look on the surface , it is what lies below that really counts
which is why if we want to live a balanced life we must concentrate on the
underpinnings that contribute to such a life and the deeper that relationship
goes, the more stable that balance will be. Just as Our Blessed Lord did where He
was in constant communion with His Father, we ought to do the same if we hope
to sail successfully through life. The good news is that by His death on the
Cross, Our Blessed Lord has made it possible to have an intimate one-on-one
relationship with our Heavenly Father, thus providing the fulcrum that unites
the two aspects of work and prayer, helping us to live a meaningful, balanced
life, for if we truly love God, He will in turn help us to love and do good to
others as He would want us to. God love you! Stay blessed!
