Under-realized

The sky of my life has been gray these past few days. The storm clouds keep rolling in trying to block the light of the Son. There are many things on my heart and mind that I will not share in detail here, but they are heavy and painful and I would appreciate your prayers*.

Through these things the Lord has been showing me how much I underestimate Him and how much I overestimate myself. The Lord first grabbed my attention with this a while back when a speaker in chapel warned against having either an over-realized eschatology or an under-realized eschatology. I am definitely not the former. I am fully aware that God’s kingdom is not here. There is too much pain and heartache and suffering and things-gone-wrong, for the reign of Christ to be in full-force. But an under-realized eschatology? I had never thought of it that way before and, at the time I heard the message, I could definitely pinpoint specific areas of my life where my life and attitude wasn’t resting in the power of Christ to hear and answer and save and transform. Oh, I was praying. I was reading my Bible. I was interceding for others. I was serving in and outside of my church. But I was also not really expecting God to answer my prayers. I was looking at the darkness in one particular ministry situation and wondering if God would really change the people that seemed so comfortable in their life apart from Him. I was too focused on the hardness of life and the mire of sin to think that God could/would change it. That is under-realized eschatology. That is a lack of faith. And that is sin.

So what do you do when the Lord convicts you of such a sin? Repent and go back to the basics. Focus on the truth. The truth is that Christ has conquered sin and death and is ruling and reigning at the right hand of God. The truth is that God desires all people to be saved. The truth is that God’s ways are higher than mine and He is often working in ways I cannot perceive. The truth is that God delights in hearing and responding to my prayers. The truth is that the Holy Spirit is guiding my prayers. The truth is that God is sovereign and good and has all-power and all-authority and He does all that He pleases and all that He pleases is good.

Another basic is that my eyes need to be fixed on the eternal, on Christ. While the things that I see and experience are real, Christ is more real. He is over those things. He allows those things. He is working in and through those things for His own glory and my good. Jesus is the constant in any given situation. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and His promises never fail. My health may fail. My job may end. My circumstances may worsen. My relationships may change or end. But Jesus is the same through it all. The Bible tells me to consider Him; to fix my eyes on Him; to focus on Him; to place my hope in Him; and to cast my cares on Him because He will sustain me and because He desires my good.

It is exactly in Jesus’ powerful working in response to my prayers that reveals my lack of faith that He will answer, because I am almost caught of guard when He does respond. For instance, I have been praying several specific things regarding two of my cousins and my dad, and one Sunday they all went to my home church together. That’s right: all at one time. And I couldn’t believe it. And the Lord was like, “Isn’t that what you’ve been requesting for each of them?” Well, yeah, but I still didn’t see that one coming. I mean, God answered three separate, specific prayers in one swoop. I’m still amazed.

Then, most recently, I prayed a rather dangerous and hard prayer last week. One that I am seeing answered this week in ways that I never would have imagined (or prayed for actually), and the Lord is beckoning me to trust His good intentions and plans in the midst of the current situation. My pastor’s blog post was very timely to strengthen my faith in light of this. In the pain and the struggling, I need not comfort myself with Christian platitudes or mask it with superficial pleasantries, but, instead, I should consider Christ. I should consider all the ways the Lord may be working to answer the cry of my heart last week, and how He may be working for His glory in my family, and how He may be working to give me and my family more of Christ.

    But, as it is written,
    “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
        nor the heart of man imagined,
   what God has prepared for those who love him” 1 Corinthians 2:9

Finally, all of these things are helping me to see that I have an under-realized view of my own brokenness and frailty (basically, an over-realized view of myself). Here is the truth: I am broken. I would rarely ever tell you that, but it’s true. I am a broken and fragile human being that needs the grace of Jesus Christ every single day, and His grace is sufficient for all of these things. So often I think I have to be strong for so many people: my sister, my family, my church family, the people I minister to, but the truth is I cannot be and God doesn’t call me to be. He calls me to rest in His strength and then He will strengthen me to help others. And it’s very well true that He could use others to strengthen me (a.k.a. be strong for me). It’s a lot of responsibility (and it’s prideful) to think that I must be strong for others. And it points to me rather than pointing to my God. I am not sufficient for any of these things, but Christ is. May He show Himself to be through this broken and fragile human being.

But [Jesus] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

*One of these things is that my dad was diagnosed today with a tumor. Please pray for his healing and for my family. Thank you.