http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw0_drFzl9Y
I love the violin in this song, and the words are a comfort during times of frustration with ideologies and other oppositions to the Truth of God's word.
I was recently thinking about the amazing power of God and a sermon we just received at church really hit the nail on the head--God's power is available to each of us in the same way as any great saint we've ever read about. His potential in our lives is fully there, it is only us that limits it. Our lack of faith, our blaming others for the difficulties in our lives, our selfishness, our being most concerned with our happiness than serving Him...these things hinder His mighty hand in our lives. The reality is this: we all have come in to this world born as sinners, we've sinned on purpose and accidentally (for all have sinned and come short of God's standard). Some of us have terrible hardship put upon us in our childhood, others have love and goodness---it doesn't matter in the life of a Christian. Many who have hardship want lay blame, they want to PROVE how bad they've had it, but underlying is often a pride that says, "I'm special"...sometimes they subtly want to punish those they feel are responsible by having a wrecked life. The thing is, if we're allowed to start out with wrong thoughts in relation to wrongdoing in our lives, it will lead to mental problems. It will lead to real issues that can't be easily corrected. Just like with children labeled "ADD"...it's quite widely known that diagnosis is the result of environmental issues, but once a child is past age 5 or thereabouts, the trouble is hardwired in, so now there is a REAL problem. I can't help but believe that many adults with continual problems could have turned out different if they'd received different feedback when their troubles began. In many ways we are the product of our environments....BUT....
For the CHRISTIAN, no hardships ultimately matter, it is Christ and Him crucified that we are to be consumed with. I'm not saying pain isn't real, victimization isn't real or the fallout from our sufferings aren't real. It is all real, but we must see it through the proper lens. Satan is against people coming to Christ; he is against us fully embracing our calling. He uses different techniques to get us down, and our own family line has build in sin to get us down. It's no mystery sexual abuse, depression, alcoholism, slothfulness, anger, adultery etc. run in family lines. It doesn't point to mere biology, it points to learned and inherited responses and behaviors, it points to what we personally must submit to God so He can change us.
I'm convinced that if I'd had a different husband, I'd be a mess now, surely diagnosed with all manner of ailments-- but my husband refused to let me believe I was any sort of victim or 'special'. That was God's mercy and grace in my life.
We live in a fallen world and so much of the trouble people have in their life is the result of believing they have unique circumstances that require all manner of intervention. God is on the throne wanting to be Lord in all areas of our lives, and that might mean we're called to suffer for righteousness. It might mean we are lonely at times, it might mean we're forsaken of men.
Don't believe the lie that because your family is a certain way you are going to be that way. Sin is inherited, just like the color of our skin or eyes, but it isn't a sentence for repetition. It is what we personally are going to have to battle.
The assignment for all of us who are in Christ is the same--Go and Tell. Whatever circumstances you are in, Christian, be consumed with the reality that Christ intervened for YOU and paid the price for YOUR sin. You must believe you sin and He is the only way to the Father. When we set our minds on this truth, we cannot help but forget the past as we're instructed, and press on. What did Paul tell us in Phil 3--
7But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, 10that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
12Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. 13Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, 14I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
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We should forget our past successes and failures, past sufferings, and press on toward the goal. To do less keeps us in the earthly, selfish realm of living an ineffectual life. There are many, many humanistic voices that encourage us to be happy, and keep looking out for number 1, but we need voices to tell us to live out Col 3:1-3. "Set our minds on things above and not on things of the earth."
We need more people to refuse to buy into what the world says about so much that is accepted as inborn and be victorious in Christ. He wants to be glorified in our lives.
