Keep going

 

I have these mental exercises I do, where I imagine myself in terrifying situations and test myself if I could, objectively not ideally, overcome them. I try not to lie to myself, I have failed too many times to put any confidence in my flesh, my self-discipline and “amazing skills”. I don’t know that these exercises do any good. I just have some control issues that gave me the ‘lovely’ delusion that if I’m not surprised by the prospect of doom and gloom, it will be less painful once it happens. Surprise: it’s not. I’m not a pessimist, I am just a lamb in wolf territory.

One of my favourite verses in Scripture is in Psalm 118:6, “The Lord is with me, I’m not afraid. What can man do to me?” I recite it a lot when I get startled. Why? Because I know what human cruelty is capable of and I also know what a coward I am. Startled, sure. Afraid? No. Not because the danger isn’t real. Not because, ‘I’ve got this’. But because The Lord is with me. Not like a pacifier that a child uses to stop crying, like a nice idea that gives one courage even if untrue. No. The fact that He’s with me changes everything. How? Because there’s literally nothing you can do to a child of God that will beat, crush or kill God out of him. Trust me, the world has tried. A child born of an imperishable seed (1Peter 1:23), that hasn’t come to put his trust in a doctrine, but in The Only One True Saviour, can’t be reasoned out of his faith. Children who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:13) cannot be destroyed. What can you possibly do to them? Starve them? They know that man can live on more than bread alone (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4). Take away their possessions? They know not to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides (1Timothy 6:17). Mock them? Their King was mocked, do you think they would think it beneath them to suffer insults on His behalf? Beat and torture them? Burn them? Sure, they will scream, but they will know that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed (Romans 8:18). Their eyes are glued on Him that called them and shaped them, their King “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). His voice is still in their ears, gently whispering “This is the way, walk in it” (Isaiah 30:21). You might label them as irrational fools, slaves to an imagined morality, indoctrinated idiots, superstitious simpletons, they have thick skin. It’s nothing that they haven’t considered about themselves at least once in their new life. You’re right in thinking they are narrow minded because by necessity they must be. They’ve narrowed their field of vision to the path before them, forgetting what’s behind they keep on going, doubting themselves almost every step of the way. Falling more times than the world can count. But do you know why they keep going? Because on their path, the set of feet they follow looks like brass, as if they were burned in a furnace (Revelation 1:15) and they remember that The One that loves them hasn’t done so from a distant place. Hasn’t just sent letters of encouragement to them, but stepped into their fire and brought them out of it. They remember that no other love in this world would have loved them to ashes and back. So, they keep going. Mock away.

by Cristina Pop

Cherished

 

I need things to make sense to me so that I can have mental clarity. I expect that once I figured something out, then there will be no surprises. I hate surprises. If it’s an object, I read the instructions, if it’s a person I learn their language, if it’s an animal, I study its behavior until I can communicate. I don’t expect the coffee machine to cook, I don’t expect people to act beyond their capacity and I most certainly don’t expect my dog to levitate.  

When it comes to God, all that flies out the window. Read all you want, study His word, eat it, there will still be moments in your life when everything you know or think you know about God will leave you dumb and rocking yourself in a corner. If you reduce your whole world view to some law of attraction type of deal, then you’ll be sorely disappointed. If you think that everything is some quid pro quo, you do good and good will come your way and you do bad and bad will come your way, then you’re in for a surprise. Many times, you’ll do good and receive evil in return, unfairly and frustratingly, but it will happen. The same way you’ll
see wicked, evil people prosper and in defiance of everything you think you know. And you can scream with Ecclesiastes, ‘meaningless! Meaningless! All is meaningless!’ or you can allow room for exceptions.

Maybe because of my past experiences, I’ve learned not to be surprised at the bad. I’ve had my world torn apart enough times to almost expect it as a given. I stood before enough graves and on enough heaps of dung like Job mumbling to God, “Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me.” (Job 10:2) Only He never came to answer me, from a storm or otherwise. All that changes nothing, but my point is, pain and suffering make sense to me because of the world that we live in. What doesn’t make sense to me at all is God’s kindness and mercy. That throws me off every time.

An omnipotent Being, omnipresent and omniscient, defied by His own creatures. To me that’s mind-boggling. Why? Because when you have the ability to erase something out of existence with a mere thought their very existence proves His love. That unless there’s kindness directed towards said creatures, they would simply cease to exist. He wouldn’t have to go though the trouble of putting a gun to my head, it would be enough to stop thinking of me with love and it would be like I never existed. So no, He doesn’t just suffer me, He thinks of me with kindness. And I can accept that as long as I think I’m useful to Him. Like of course He’s pleased with me when I am obedient but as soon as I think I’ve disappointed Him, I expect distance. Punishment. That’s not as a result of anything He’s done, it’s the way this world has conditioned me to react. At a rational level I understand that a car crash doesn’t happen because I missed Church on Sunday, cancer doesn’t happen because I fail to have a prayer routine and mothers don’t die because I skipped a devotional, but at an emotional level you still pick holes in your soul to blame yourself for things outside your control. The enemy is sneaky like that. I still have a billion unknowns about God, but I know God is not like that. Then one might ask, then what is He like? I’ll tell you: LOVE. He’s more, much more than that, but He’s not less. Everything He does and thinks is moved by that.

When Adam and Eve were rebelling in the garden and instead of crying their sin, they were more concerned to hide their shame, God made them clothes so they wouldn’t feel naked in His presence (Genesis 3:21). When Cain killed his brother Abel and tried to hide it and then complained about his harsh sentence, God gave Him a sign to protect him (Genesis 4:15). When humanity defiled itself so much that it grieved God to His heart (Genesis 6:6) He provided a way for salvation in the form of an ark. When Abraham was busy lying to Abimelech and endangering his whole household, God was calling Abraham His prophet (Genesis 20:7). When Jacob was shaking with fear of his brother whom he had deceived and cheated, God met with Jacob, wrestled him out of his fear, then blessed him (Genesis 32). While Aharon was making a golden calf for the people of Israel to worship instead of God who took them out of Egypt, God was in the process of giving Moses instruction about Aharon’s priestly garments that he would later wear (Exodus 28:2-4). While Moses forfeited his right to enter the promised land, God still showed it to him from afar (Deuteronomy 32:49-52). While Israel was sinning against God, God was busy preparing judges for them to save them from their enemies. When Samson betrayed his vow to God and got shaven and lost all his power, God made his hair grow back (Judges 16:22). When the army of Israel was cowering in fear before the Philistines and their giant champion, God sent them a boy to crush his head with a river stone and a sling (1 Samuel 17:50) I could go on and on about God’s heart in the face of human failure but none would speak more than what happened at the cross, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) While we were still in rebellion, while we hated Him and wanted nothing to do with Him. Not when we cleaned up our act, not when we merited atonement, not when we were obedient. While we were busy making our idols and worshiping everything and anything else (Isaiah 44:9-20), He was loving us, “Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you; you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me. I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you.” (Isaiah 44:21-22)

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39)

by Cristina Pop

My story

 

The stories we tell ourselves make all the difference in shaping us as human beings. We all tell ourselves stories. Some more real than others. But our heart functions on those stories, that’s why we decide upon a world view that coincides with the stories we tell ourselves and call that ‘belief’.  And it doesn’t matter if that belief is atheism, Islam, ancient aliens, wicca or Christianity, we all continue to feed our minds on our stories just to act like we understand the point of everything.

Now, I can only speak as a born-again Christian, so I don’t know on an objective level if the other world views ever face doubts and faith struggles as Christians do. I can only speak about them in a critical sense. I don’t know if an atheist ever sits in bed at night and in a sincere moment asks himself, ‘did I get it right? What if? ...’ I don’t rightly know if a Hindu ever wonders at his pantheon and thinks it’s a joke. Does a Muslim ever wonder if he’s praying into thin air? Maybe it’s just Christians that have doubts, or maybe just this Christian… but I doubt that.

In my case, some might say, my doubts are warranted. I mean, I have not been gentle with my faith. I didn’t spare it any opposing arguments, not from Voltaire and David Hume with all their mocking, not from all of Kant’s veiled atheism, not from Spinoza’s pantheism, not from Schopenhauer or Nietzsche’s disdain, not from the Talmud, not from the Quran, not from anything. I constantly pick my belief apart and put it back together. Maybe that’s an innate fault of mine because I never want to build with things that can be broken, that’s how I had to abandon many theories in my own theology, simply because they broke under real pressure. I have no doubt many more will follow simply because I am aware they’re a human’s attempt to grasp the infinite with a very finite mind.

Now I did say I have not been kind to my own faith, but there are reasons why it’s still standing. One, because I honestly don’t think I’m the one keeping it, otherwise it would have died 24 years ago, at the very beginning, with the very first trial. And second, because I still tell myself stories. A Christian would call it: the gospel. To others, it’s just another story among many other stories. But I think even begrudgingly the opponents would have to admit that nothing in this world has ever split history in BEFORE and AFTER their life like Christ has. Oh, and if I hear another ignorant argument that it was just Constantine’s doing, it just proves that you really need to read more, and I mean real books, not pseudo scholars on YouTube or TikTok. A good start would be Will Durant’s Caesar and Christ. Don't worry, he was just a historian and not Christian. It might shock you to know that Constantine did very little for Christianity, no matter that the Christian Orthodox Church has made him a saint, but I digress.

For a Christian, i.e. me, it’s absolutely vital to constantly remember the gospel. The story that God, in His love has created a beautiful, ordered and good world and in it He has placed as His image bearers, humans. He gave them the ability to chose and they chose rebellion and that has thrown the world into chaos and left man naked and ashamed before The Holy God. So, God in His love, for He so loved the world (John 3:16), has made a promise to send someone to redeem His creation from its fall. Throughout 39 books in the Olt Testament, God has either hinted at His initial promise or outright renewed His promise for a Redeemer. And men and women that were loyal to God have always looked in faith towards a future redemption. Until one day it came, but in such humility that people just couldn’t see in the son of a carpenter from Nazareth THE Redeemer. They couldn’t make sense why God would talk about The Promise in such exalted terms and in reality, appear as something that you wouldn’t look at twice, after all “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.” (Isaiah 53:2) So humanity took The Promise and nailed Him to a cross. It never occurred to us that, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” (Isaiah 53:4)

And The Promise died while praying for those that put Him on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) And we didn’t know. We couldn’t possibly imagine a reality where God, The Eternal, Everlasting would suffer His Son to be “pierced for our transgressions; crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5) All of it because we could never redeem ourselves. If we had Mother Theresa’s love and mercy, Budha’s discipline, Alexander the great’s ambition, Socrate’s contemplative nature, all combined in one single individual, couldn’t have purchased the re-entry in Eden, God’s sacred space. Only Christ’s death could purchase that. And as a sign that God has received the payment, He was raised from the dead. “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” (Romans 4:25)

“He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:10-13)

The good news is that Jesus not only died and was raised up, but He is with The Father. “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” (Romans 8:34) Now, for everyone that trusts in Him for their redemption, there is “an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1) And that’s the point I need to remind myself every day… today. That I have a Lawyer, Advocate, Defender, when my enemy tries to accuse me before my Father. One that can and does litigate every case brought against me. And let me tell you, He wins every time because He doesn’t just know the word, He is The Word.

I know that’s a fairytale to some and if you’re curious to know what I think about that, I suggest you read Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton and that’s my opinion of your opinion. 

To those that trust in The Promise, I say, hang in there… the night is almost over. This darkness will end. You’ve been saved from the power of sin and there’s a day coming when you’ll be saved from the presence of sin too. The lies will cease. The doubts will die. We live through faith and walk through faith towards an unseen home, be strong. Be brave. And trust, beloved, trust that Our High Priest who has passed through the heavens (Hebrews 4:14) can and will get you through this valley.

 

by Cristina Pop