Tag Archives: suffering and victory

Book Reviews, Theology Thoughts

Embracing the Victory

A look through the Scriptures, especially the New Testament, reveals a lot of passages about the victory that comes through the new life in the kingdom. We become new people with a new family built upon love, grace, mercy and forgiveness. No matter what pain or sorrow we have experienced before, we now have a chance at a new life. The old is gone; behold the new.

Sadly, a lot of people fail to embrace fully the victory of Jesus in their lives. The scars of the past are so deep and numerous that it is hard to trust again. What happens if I open up my heart and Jesus fails me? What if I try to fight the chemical, emotional or spiritual addictions in my life and I fail? Perhaps it is just safer not to dream of victory; instead I will just push on through this life, hanging onto the promise of healing in the next life at the resurrection of the dead. As it has been said, the pain that I know is better than the pain that I don’t know.

Not wanting victory may sound crazy to some people, but there are a lot more of us out there who are afraid of change than those who embrace the change of life that comes with Jesus. I’m reminded of the time when Jesus went to the pool of Bethesda, which was a sort of hospital and healing spa (John 5:1-15). Walking among the sick and hurting, Jesus stopped next to a gentleman who had been sick for 38 years and asked him the most important question of all: “Do you want to get well?” One would think that the gentleman would emphatically say “Yes!” as he was talking to a known miracle worker. Yet, instead of answering in the positive, the man launches into a sad tale of how it was impossible for him to get healed because of this or that problem. The 38-years of pain had sucked his hope, faith and vision of the future to the point that he failed to see the victory right in front of him.

A lot of Jesus followers have been conditioned by our culture, world, church, family, friends, or even ourselves, to accept our addictions, pain and defeat. Perhaps there was a time when we cried out for victory, but, when it didn’t come, we gave up hope. We became like the gentleman sitting next to a pool of healing with no hope of victory. Instead of embracing the new life in Jesus and the destruction of sin that comes with following him, we become content with simply managing our sin. Sin management is where we become comfortable with certain sins, habits and/or addictions. We all excuse certain things in our lives that we know are not healthy and do not glorify God. Instead of trying to fight these actions or thoughts, we just manage them. We keep them under lock and key, perhaps indulge them a bit here and there, not enough to cause any problems, but just enough to take the edge off things.

As a pastor there were times when people would inform me that they were an alcoholic, twenty years dry. While I applaud the fact that they have acknowledged their addiction, I would get concerned about their sense of identity. It was almost as if their past addiction had defined them forever. It didn’t matter that they had not taken a drink of alcohol or gotten drunk in over a decade, they were still an alcoholic. Followers of Jesus fall into this same trap when they constantly define themselves as a sinner. Yes, I know we all sin, but the moment we bow our knees to Jesus and confess him as our Lord and King, we become a new creation. We are no longer sinners but saints! Our old identity has been removed and we are now part of a new family. To stop short of fully embracing the victory of the King is to slap him in the face. It is a huge dishonor to turn down the gift of the King and Creator of the universe.

Does this mean that we will be free from every bad thought, addictions or habit? Perhaps, perhaps not. It is not up to me to know the mind of God. What I do know is that Paul lived with a thorn in his side that was not taken away. Perhaps some of you reading this will have things in your lives that won’t go away. To you I say, fight and fight and never stop fighting! We live deep within enemy territory and have been called to advance the rule and reign of God into every area of this planet. To stop fighting is to give up on God and his mission. He is a trustworthy General who is leading an army in the invasion of this present evil age. We, his daughters and sons, have been trusted with the mission of fighting on the front lines. Let us never forget this: let us always continue to fight for the victory we know we have as daughters and sons of the Creator King.

Remember our gentleman at the pool of Bethesda? Jesus didn’t let him get away with all the excuses as to why he couldn’t get healed. Instead of turning around and walking away to someone else, perhaps someone with a bit more faith, Jesus simply says, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” He knew that God wanted to bring victory in the midst of the pain and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Isn’t it wonderful that God doesn’t always listen to our excuses? Jesus wants us embrace the victory that come into the world through his life, death, resurrection and ascension.

Embracing the victory of God is to declare him the King over our circumstances. It is a war cry to the world around us that we will not settle for less than complete restoration of creation itself. We are the people of God who know without a doubt that our King will win, no matter what circumstances we may be in,. It was this mindset that caused the early believers to stand strong in the face of death itself, refusing to deny Jesus despite pain of torture or death by wild animals. And when the plagues came, the followers of Jesus refused to run away, choosing instead to care for the sick and the dying while knowing that staying most likely meant death. These believers understood that the victory belonged to King Jesus and no matter what the circumstances were, he was still the King of Kings.

It is now our turn to walk boldly in the victory of Jesus. We get the privilege of telling people that there is a new way to live and that there is victory from the pain of life. True, some people may push us away as they like living in their pain and darkness. That is okay, as they did that same thing to Jesus. It is the Holy Spirit’s job to draw them to Jesus, not yours! Our job is to proclaim that the kingdom of God is here! Go back and look at the command of Jesus: it was to proclaim that the day of the Lord, the new age of life had broken into human history. That is our message. We are saints who live in the tension of the here and not yet of the kingdom, embracing both the suffering and the victory that comes with pledging our lives to the Creator King.

[box]The above post is an excerpt from my book, The Here and Not Yet (pages 92-94)[/box]

Book Reviews, Theology Thoughts, Vineyard Movement

Normal Christian Living

Growing up on a farm with cows, dogs, chickens and goats, my brother and I were hard on our shoes, forcing my father to take us shoe shopping every few months. And every time he always reminded us of his one rule: no white shoes as they would be quickly destroyed. One day, though, I was able to talk him into allowing me to buy a pair of white tennis shoes. I promised him that I would take good care of them and make sure they stayed white. This was a lofty promise as keeping a pair of white shoes white was like keeping the sun from rising! Yet my dad, most surely out of love as he knew that I would never be able to keep my promise, bought them for me.

Sure enough, it didn’t take very long before the shoes were covered with a layer of manure and mud. Going over to the water hose, I proceeded to spray the shoes down trying to find a patch of white in the midst of the brown dirt. After what seemed like hours, I finally had a pair of white tennis shoes! Rejoicing, I went into the house where in the bright lights I realized that the shoes were still more brown than white. Sighing deeply, I went into the bathroom and grabbed an old toothbrush. Sitting down beside the bathtub, I begin to scrub each of the seams with the toothbrush, trying to recover that original whiteness. There would be times when I thought I was through only to turn the shoe over and see a piece of mud stuck in a seam or a smear of brown gunk. It took forever – or at least it seemed like forever – to clean those shoes!

The Christian walk is like that.

The Creator God made us in his image as living declarations of his rule and reign. Living in the fallen world of evil, we quickly get covered in the mud and manure of life through our own actions, the actions of others or just because we happened to be there. No matter why, Jesus climbs down into the mud with us and picks us up, washing off the mud and restoring our relationship with him. At that point we are no longer the same people we once were.

After a while, we think that we are doing pretty well – I mean, we are no longer covered in mud. Then Jesus takes us inside the house and shows us all the mud and manure stuck to the seams of our lives. These are the heart issues, the things that no one else can see. Yet, the Creator King isn’t content with only cleaning the outside, he wants to clean every area of our lives so that we can truly live. As we allow him to do this, things start getting better. No more big pieces of mud; no more lying, stealing and drunkenness. At the same time, things are also getting harder. The cleaner we get, the more we realize how far we are from perfection. Our hearts break at things that we used to ignore. In the past, it was normal to bark out a harsh comment from time to time, or allow our minds to dwell on the physical appearance of someone of the opposite sex. Now our hearts break when we so much as think about such things.

To be faithful to our King and the Scriptures, we must fully embrace both the suffering and the victory of this life. We must not break this tension no matter how hard one side or the other will pull us. On the days that we are depressed and nothing is going right, we must remind ourselves that we are new joint heirs with Jesus and new creations under the new age of life. On the days when we are tempted to think that we have conquered all of our sins and addictions, let us remind ourselves that we are in process, that the light of Jesus can, and will, reveal to us the hidden faults tucked away in our inner hearts.

When we embrace both the here and the not yet of the kingdom of God, we enter a new place of life. We gain the freedom to confess our current sins and struggles to those around us, instead of hiding behind a façade of victory passages and promises. Neither do we have to wallow in the muck of depression trying to endure the pain of this world. We have the freedom to be real. If we mess up, then we admit it and move on. As a people living between the ages, we must learn to embrace the tension of the victory and suffering, the here and not yet. In doing so, we gain the freedom to be the people of God.

[box]An excerpt from my book, The Here and Not Yet. Physical book and e-book versions available at Amazon, iTunes, and other online bookstores.[/box]