We tag our mental calendars with post-it notes as targets for breathing room. Our days and nights are cluttered with uninvited problems. These are energy drainers for certain. So we look forward to an event here and a break there just in hopes of surviving routine drudgery.
Some of these stresses, honestly, are caused by our poor judgment or even poorer action. Others are the result of life's weaknesses that simply seem to cause good things to unravel. When some of these occur, one can feel so overwhelmed it can begin to take on a sense of what it might be like to be buried alive.
How shall we respond?
Shall we fight back? Should we heap more guilt upon ourselves due to our obvious pitiful failures? Or would it just be better to go ahead and breath our last? The response needs to be weighed in light of the power of God rather than a reaction to insurmountable frustration.
What we might consider is the need to yield. Jesus gave in to the crowds of persecution...so that he could save...the crowds of persecution. There was no other way. Jesus' call for followers to take up our crosses and follow him had at least two goals in mind; our death and our resurrection.
To bow our necks and grit our teeth in self-willed determination to win any battle is, for certain, humanistic; but it isn't spiritual warfare. The way to really win an enemy is to lay down one's life so that the enemy can become a converted disciple of Jesus. Our dying capacity is on the line.
And then there's that resurrection part that follows the dying part. We can surmise a bit how the deadening factor works. That's within our will. We are clueless about the resurrection power part because it is completely in the will and the hands of God's exertion. We can do nothing about resurrection power except receive it.
So it is in relationships. As contrary as they/me/we are, the God who lives to make something from nothing and gives life to the dead (Romans 4:17) gets to show His talent in these exact moments like no other. Our misfortune is that in such moments we forget to believe.
Note: when we believe we let go of our managerial and manipulative approach in order to have a chance at experiencing what can't be forecast nor explained. We surrender our gotta fix it mentality for the divine process of Him running our show.
Yes, we forget. So we roll up our calculating sleeves and march off for yet another conversation that often goes South. We forget. We don't seem to remember that we know a Specialty God who has mastered the nothingness and the deadness of our relationships. He alone holds the keys to unlock man's disappointing tombs.
Our isn't to figure the best manipulation to win another. Ours is the work of believing God when we are stupidly clueless with a touch of exacerbating self-defense. We can't. Our job is to die for the aggravating enemy. By His grace God will use this death to bring two people or three (or 30) to new life!
When you are overwhelmed which feels more like being buried, try to remember that the One you call Master humbled himself by coming to earth to walk in your shoes first. When he heard that whisper of Father he came back to life never to die again. If he is our hope, what hope must we possess for others who wish to wear us down.....or even kill us?
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