Well, as of tomorrow, it will be a week since I returned from India and for those that are waiting for an overall recap of my adventures, patience. It’s coming. Right now I’m fighting against some set-backs…for one, a laptop that’s still not back yet and a mountain of work that I’m trying to get caught up on while trying to catch up on life and sleep and everything else that’s part of the normal life.
I must say that my return has been met with some fierce fighting for my soul and my joy. It’s like this dark cloud that’s trying to rob me of everything I gained. I could respond in one of two ways. I could succumb to the pressure and throw away everything I’ve gained over these past short but long weeks…OR I can see it as a confirmation of the genuine nature of all that I learned and was challenged by. Spiritual warfare is real. I believe it. I feel it. I know it. I also know that there’s an ongoing battle for my soul and yours as well. Do I capitulate? Do I throw up my hands and say “what’s the use”?! That’s the easy way out. The easy way is to turn your back on everything in life that is the cause of pain and live a life running from anything you risk losing. Oh, there are things from my past that would be so easy to return to. There’s safety in being alone. There’s safety in walls.
Really?
What kind of safety? What’s riskier? Living a life investing in others or living a life alone. The answer is obvious but needs to be asked because I know we all encounter times when we’d just like to curl up in a cave, plug our ears and drown out everyone and everything. But what kind of life is that? Christ called us to life and life more abundantly. What does that mean? How can we always be happy when we’re being kicked around by the waves of life? It’s an important question that we all need to face…head on.
To give you a sneak peek into what I will go into more extensively in my big “What I Learned in India” essay, the one thing I’ve really been confronting in life is the nature and place of joy. Call it selfish Christianity. Call it Christian Hedonism (borrowed from a John Piper book)… God has called us to live lives not of self-deprecation and woe-is-me attitudes but to live a life victoriously. We are to serve out of love, not duty. I served in India. I spent a lot of money to be there. I missed work which I’m now having to make up for. But all that “sacrifice”…for the surpassing joy of serving others. I would hardly even call it a sacrifice. It was at some level a wonderfully selfish experience and one that I think God is pleased to see in all of us. To revel in the joy of smiling faces. To touch and listen and feel the joys and pains…it’s exciting – as it should be.
Our Christianity MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST be lived out in joy or we are mearly smearing the sacrifice of Christ in our filthy mud and are essentially telling Christ that his death means little…and that we must continue to suffer when he says “I endured your penalty and suffering”. Woe to those of us that regard his death and resurrection as anything other than what it was – a price paid once and for all! What a promise! What a gift! Let us not tuck it away for special occasions.
Choose you this day… Who do you serve? Who do I serve? Oh, what a prize and joy is life. Live it. Love it. Revel in it. God is glorified in our smiles. Don’t let anyone or anything rob you of that
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