BUILD TO STAND STRONG
For years, experts have warned us of more frequent natural disasters as a result of climate change. There would be more hurricanes, wildfires and floods in many parts of the world. Today, we are seeing these predictions realized. Recently, Greece experienced massive wildfire followed by torrential rains and devasting flooding. Hong Kong recorded the heaviest rainfall in 140 years that drenched the city and saw the city grind to a standstill. And the deadliest earthquake since 1960 ripped through Morocco killing more than 2,900 people.
Properties were destroyed and life severely disrupted – whether in first-world cities or the rural countryside. Homes and buildings that had been around for generations were instantly ravaged when a new disaster arrived. While it is impossible to control such natural phenomena, countries are struggling to minimize their toll on human life.
This shows us that stability comes not from tenure (how long we hold onto something) but from the depth of its foundation. The same applies to our relationship with God. Can we continue to say we have been Christians for a long time yet we continually live unexamined lives. This irony was not lost on Jesus.
Luke 6:46-49 recorded a conversation that put the followers of Jesus under scrutiny. The Lord began by saying, “So” to emphatically point out the obvious phoniness in their behaviour. Then, He continued, “…why do you keep calling Me ‘Lord, Lord!’ when you don’t do what I say? I will show you what it’s like when someone comes to Me, listens to My teaching, and then follows it. But anyone who hears and doesn’t obey is like a person who builds a house right on the ground, without a foundation. When the floods sweep down against that house, it will collapse into a heap of ruins.”
Today, we have the habit of calling Jesus ‘Lord’ in our prayers and during times of need and distress, yet our confession is incongruent with our behaviour towards the One we call ‘Lord’.
Let’s take a look at three key points that Jesus touched on for building our spiritual being to stand strong in Him.
1. COME WITH COMMITMENT
God is not easily flattered by the sight of crowds or by popular events hosted in His Name. What counts is our individual commitment to Him. When we come to Jesus, He expects us to give Him our priority of time and attention.
God’s spiritual presence is not something to take for granted. To come to God is to approach with a sense of loyalty and devotion to Him, in the ordinary moments as well as celebratory, sad or tremendously difficult times of our lives. Also, when we call Jesus ‘Lord’, it is not a religious title we give Him, but an admission that He has full authority and control over our lives.
As humans, we often talk about friendships that go on for years and years, regardless of the health and strength of the connections. They are easy to maintain with low expectations of involvement because they have no depth. With God, however, how long we know Him is far less important than how deeply we know Him. If we find ourselves hesitating to commit ourselves fully to God, we are, in Jesus’ words, ‘not fit for the Kingdom of God’. (Luke 9:62).
Prayer and time with God are not religious checkboxes for us to go through ritually each day. Without commitment to God, we will not experience any deepening in our connection with Him
2. LISTEN WITH CONVICTION
There are some people we consider ‘deep’ because they seem to have the ability to skip the superficial reading of situations, people and information and articulate something beyond what they appear to say. When we read God’s Word, we must at the same time, ask God to reveal to us something new. Some people treat the Bible like a novel they have read once over and are done with it! They find nothing new in every reading of the same Scripture verses and act as though knowing it for a long time is the same as having a deep knowledge of it!
In truth, familiarity with Bible verses does nothing to deepen our understanding of it, if we do not also let the Spirit of the Word renew our minds over and over again. There is also no point flipping through the Bible to ‘land on the right verses’ because it is like fortune-telling. The reality is that God is able to talk to us from any verse, if we would stay long enough to pay attention to what He is really saying to us.
It is written that ‘faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God’. (Romans 10:17 KNJV). Reading aloud helps keep our thoughts from interfering with what we read when we read silently because our thoughts are often louder than our silent reading! We must be convinced of who Jesus is in our lives and believe with all our heart that all His teachings are true. They are not moral imperatives!
Those who regularly approach God and His Word to listen, will find their faith strengthened with deeper convictions in Him. On the other hand, a refusal to listen to God shows up in the form of a stubborn refusal towards inner change and a resistance to Word-based Christ-centred living.
3. FOLLOW IN OBEDIENCE
To follow means to stay close and within reach. The woman with the issue of blood had followed Jesus so closely that she could reach out to grab the hem of His garment (Luke 8:44). Besides proximity, we also need to approach God with an attitude of obedience - not opinion or obstinacy!
James 1:22-24 makes it clear: "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” What this means is that without closely following Jesus, and keeping our eyes on Him, we will find ourselves not only acting in conflict with the Word of God, but our opinion, will-power and obstinacy will become our defacto master.
We may try to compensate by attending more church meetings and teachings, and keeping up superficial relationships, so people won’t really know how we are doing. But God is not interested in any substitutes for total obedience to Him.
The prophet Samuel delivered a clear rebuke to King Saul when he tried to rationalize actions that did not fully comply with God’s instructions. In short, Samuel told Saul, “To obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22). The same applies to every believer today.
There is simply no substitute for obedience to God. It is the mark of maturity and strength that true followers of Jesus should always have the desire for.
This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BIR Session held on 16 September 2023.
