"The true test of a saint’s life is not successfulness but faithfulness on the human level of life. We tend to set up success in Christian work as our purpose, but our purpose should be to display the glory of God in human life, to live a life “hidden with Christ in God” in our everyday human conditions" -Oswald Chambers
Life has been quite interesting lately. In the midst of change, I have found a whole new perspective on what it means to be a child of God. My church, Door of Hope has been going through the Beatitudes for the past 5 weeks and it has wrecked my view on what we are REALLY called to live like. I know I will probably write a VERY LONG blog post on all I have learned from this, so stayed tuned.
I have had a lot of time to reflect lately on life. I have realized just how much I strive for successfulness even if that means I abandon faithfulness. Now this sounds horrible and it is! Working for a non-profit Christian organization, I think that my purpose is to be SO successful at my job because IT'S FOR THE KINGDOM! So, if I can get 200 kids to Young Life club and disciple 100 and send 1,000 kids to camp from my area each year, then I have SUCCEEDED! Wrong.
Truth is....this is not the point of why the Lord has called me to this. When I felt the Lord calling me to go on Young Life staff, there was no voice saying, "And I need you to be the most successful person at this in the world by getting a ton of kids to club and camp." No. The calling was the same as yours. "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:19
So if this is what we are called to, why do we make it so formulated? And how do we measure success?
My guess is that we make things formulated because of longing for control. We want control because then we will always know the outcome. So if I build a formula of what I believe will make me successful in life (for the KINGDOM..ha.) then I can ensure that I will never fail. Oh, but what an endless and losing battle this will be. Success is not measured by any gauge we use. Success is, in reality, faithfulness to living a life hidden with Christ in God. Jesus lived 30 years in obscurity, hidden in God. Although we know little about those years of his life, I know he did not spend it thinking about anything but his Father's call. He was not concerned with success as the world had measured it. Success was remaining in unwavering and close relationship with the Father. He was about his Father's business, not the world's.
But we don't just struggle with this in a job....we struggle this in how other's see us.
I have felt weighed down and broken in the past couple months and at some point I realized that I did not believe I had anything to offer because of it. How can I be successful AND broken? How can someone love me when I am broken. Those two don't go hand and hand. Yet, I have seen the Lord work through me in the midst my brokenness more in the last month, then I have EVER seen him work in my life. I have pressed in and hard to him, I have wept more tears than I knew existed in the human body and have felt his presence covering me constantly. I am dependent. I literally cannot make it without Him. I was scared at first for my Young Life girls to see me like this. I am the leader. I need to be strong for them. Yet, I can not fake it. I am undone.
The miracle of it all is that never in all the years of doing Young Life have I had girls want to meet with me more. I asked one of them yesterday, "why do you still want to hang with me, when I am so sad?" She said, "Because it is comforting to know you bleed too. I want to be around someone who not only loves God as passionately as you do, but who is honest that life is hard sometimes and we just need to be real with that." You see my friends, THIS IS IT. We think we are safe behind our masks. We think we can survive this life by not dealing with our hurt and pain. We think we can just stuff it and move on. Yet, is that living a life hidden in Christ with God in our everyday human condition? No. Gosh, the destruction I have witnessed in lives around me, people I love SO deeply and even in my own life because of this very issue. We are called to live life in Christ, UNHIDDEN before him, yet our lives hidden IN him. The only road to healing is life in Christ and surrender in that. Life with the mask off, totally living as we are.
So...if you are broken-hearted, be broken-hearted in a life hidden in Christ. If you are ashamed, know the blood of Christ has covered a multitude of sin and go to him with all of it and rest in a life hidden in him. Even if life is sweet for you, the sweetness comes from Christ and a life hidden in him. Don't hide from your pain, don't hide from difficulty, don't hide from being as you are right now. Walk through it with faithfulness in trusting that ONLY through a life hidden in Christ will healing come. HEALING WILL COME, you saint!
There is hope too in this. When I find myself doubting the healing that can come in my life or in someone's life whom I love, I remember this truth. We CANNOT be hidden in Christ and NOT be healed by him too. Healing is happening and that brings so much hope to my heart. We are not stuck in our current condition because Christ is setting us free daily and renewing us daily, so much so that one day we will look back on these days and smile at HIS faithfulness in our lives. Even if at times we are "faithless, HE WILL remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself."
This is good news.
