The Eternal Things
I’m constantly trying to figure God out. He must find it amusing. Or annoying. It could go either way, I guess. But I want to know what God is doing. I can drive myself crazy asking ‘why is He doing this’ or ‘what is He going to do with that?’
But we don’t need to worry about what God is doing. God’s handling what God needs to do, and He’s doing it just fine. What we need to be worrying about is what God wants us to do. Simple little impossibly hard things like obeying His commands, loving each other, caring, encouraging, that kind of thing.
And trusting that He knows what is right, has the power to do it, and is faithful to His promises, because He loves us.
Our Best vs. God’s Best
Several years ago, a friend asked me if I wanted to be on his mud run team. “Hmm, sounds fun”, I said, “but what’s a mud run?” A couple of amusing minutes later, not only was I positive I didn’t want to be on his mud run team, but I was also reevaluating the judgement of my friend selection. That sounded insane!
No offense to anyone who has participated in these self-inflicted torture tests, but I’m out. After paying about a $100 entry fee, you get to run like 2 miles through freezing water and mud, through dozens of obstacles including my personal favorite, live electrical wires! But not for nothing, if you complete the course, you get a free tee shirt.
At first glance, this might be the way we see the Christian Walk. Being crucified with Christ and baptized into His death doesn’t sound fun (Romans 6). Dying to self and picking up our cross daily doesn’t sound appealing at face value either (1 Cor. 15 & Luke 9). But that’s because of our flawed human perspective. Our selfish nature causes us to see our ways as best and, as a result, we view trading them for God’s righteousness as a sacrifice.
But God doesn’t see it is a sacrifice. From His perspective, we are ALREADY running the self-inflicted torture test, and He’s offering us a way out. Everything Jesus suffered at the Cross was to give us access to a better way. It even refunds our entry fee and ends up with something way better than a tee-shirt.
If you want to see how much God wants us to stop torturing ourselves, just look at the Cross. Did the same God who loved us enough to brutally sacrifice His only Son for us do it just so we could sacrifice our own joy back to Him? If that’s what He was willing to do to give us another way, how much torture are we putting ourselves through?
I won’t try to answer that. Even God couldn’t find words to answer that. He showed us with Jesus.