The Journey to Strength
Someone expressed a desire to grow in a certain area of life. That comment triggered a brooding in me over a day or so, which hatched a scripture which triggered these two pages. Please toss what does not bless.
Life is frustrating. People, that is many people want life to be simple. Linear. Do this and always get the same result. Perfect. Beautiful. Certain. Reasonable. Consistent. And it – life is. Sometimes.
Sometimes though we see outcomes less than desired. Our hopes seem to be just out of reach. Or perhaps deferred.
If I were Leonardo DA Vinci and had painted the Mona Lisa, while others are welcome to make their comments, only I the artist/maker could share the painting’s actual meaning and my purpose for painting it.
As to the world’s value assessment, you may get some measure of the worth of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci compared to Sam Jones who just started finger painting at age six. And also please notice that despite the world’s assessment, even if both paintings could think, neither could properly assess their purpose or value from their own perspective. Of course, the Mona Lisa could “think” because it fetched a great price at auction it was the most valuable. However the finger painted one might disagree as the youth who ran into the house to save that picture from a house fire at the risk of a life. The point is, the artwork, no matter how brilliant hasn’t the ability to assess the meaning of life, much less individual purpose and personal value (MLPV).
The same is true of human beings. This is a tough thing, as we want to know the meaning of life and our individual purpose and our unique value, which we have now stated is impossible to know from personal perspective. Popularity, wage earning, creative ability, skills expertise and such may reward us. But none answer our cry for true MLPV. Society cannot answer this cry satisfactorily either.
Unfortunately we all seem to be wired to seek MLPV and yet can’t get to it in ourselves. This scenario is fundamentally disheartening.
Along comes the world. Says, you come from slime from some primordial soup, thence larger to apes, and then to Fred Flintstone (apologies to Fred). Says there is no answer to MLP and V is determined by what you can produce (and so when you stop producing your value presumably drops to zero except as fertilizer). But our hearts rebel against this outcome as way below our aspirations and dreams (we are made for more!). This scenario is also discouraging at best and fatal at worst.
Along comes intelligent design. Those scientists who are honest in their craft will admit that it is statistically impossible to explain the complexity of say a human eye by evolutionary means. And that while they may not like the answer, it takes less faith to believe in intelligent design for that eye than an evolution answer produced randomly by chance plus time (other folks add “plus matter” to the equation but that is not fair if we don’t also question where the original matter came from).
So intelligent design lets us know MLP at least exists (but we still don’t know what specifically MLP is because we don’t know the designer’s reasoning). This is a better scenario than evolution but is still a bit discouraging. Probably explains why agnostics and deists generally seem to be happier than atheists who are also asking the MLPV questions. See, we all want to know the answers. But some limit the possible areas of search (ala “I’ll accept anything but God” but this is intellectually dishonest).
Along comes Jesus. For the Christian, this really makes the journey to MLPV oh so much straighter, because the bible (assuming you adhere to the bible) is pretty clear what our MLP is. Romans 11:36 succinctly states “…from him and through him and to him are all things”. John 1:3 clarifies “all things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made”. Ephesians 2:10 introduces us to the artist/maker of us: “for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them”. Jesus (the artist/maker of all men) is the only one who can tell us the true meaning of our life, my purpose in him for being made, and my value. Also note God created a timeline and planned the future events we are enabled to do.
Along come the devil and his minions (not Dave and Kevin BTW). As described in the bible, these are spirit beings that can talk with people (ala Eve’s conversation in the garden). Jesus shares that satan has no truth in him and that he is a liar (John 8:44). So, in this life we unfortunately have to endure a occasional barrage of (worthless) words spoken to us from “evil” spirits to our spirit, designed to discourage us (ala kill/steal/destroy). Occasionally these “evil” words are also received and passed on by hurting people as well (who share things to us like “you’ll never amount to much” or “you are so ugly”). The nasty little lie the enemy hopes we fall into is we sometimes (mistakenly) think these “evil” thoughts are actually our thoughts and we begin to own (embrace) the lie as true. This allows for the enemy to continually harass us, reminding us of the lie, and causing torment.
The Ephesians 6:11 armor of God is very helpful to put on (armor up) in order to avoid these fiery darts. Verse 18 to pray at all times works wonderfully once armored up: Say you hear internally or externally “you are so stupid”: Let fly a praise or a thank each time you are attacked, using it as a trigger to talk to God. Talk about frustrating the enemy if they realize they are reminding us to connect to God!
Now to the key verses to deal with V (my Value) which emphasize “let us therefore strive to enter that rest”. Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 speak of a sabbath rest where we (believers) cease from our labors. The work (striving if you will) is to believe that God has done all the work and that my role is to accept His work as done for me.
So now the battle of the enemy becomes clearer: the enemy’s desire is to get me to work to produce value (to justify my existence), rather than to understand that in Christ, my artist maker has already chosen me and has already personally given me an inestimable value far beyond my own ability to ever repay: God values me more than the death of Jesus Christ as payment for my sins. So – my work is to live free and thankful because “the work needed to justify my life is done”. This is a large place.
A side note: no painter paints the same picture over and over. The artist maker (if he sees what is ahead) “prepares beforehand” (see the earlier Ephesians 2:10 reference) each artwork/person according to the purposes with the talents and physical, mental, and emotional characteristics necessary for the tasks God has seen them (destined to) do in the future. Each one of us in a masterpiece and none of us are carelessly designed or made by mistake. It is dangerous and foolish to reject our individual bent just because we don’t understand (or like) something about ourselves. Our job is to let our artist/maker reveal to us this our unfolding wondrous MLPV.
So perhaps a good subtitle for the journey to strength would be: learning what is and then aligning with my revealed MLPV. Until this becomes my desire (to follow Christ plan for me and the life he has given me), the enemy has so much fun attacking me. But, when my life is hid with Christ, the enemy cannot find me as God is my shelter and my continual strength.