MY LIVING EPITAPH
(8-minute read)
SOME PEOPLE PREFER TO TEST WATER before they make an important commitment. In a community, this means they like to take their time to see how well the community supports their goals and aspirations. While it makes perfect sense to put in time to explore our new environments, if we are only ever dipping our toes in the water, we put ourselves in danger of being trapped in our own narratives of what works for us and what does not.
Imagine an epitaph that reads: “Visitor, volunteer, subscriber, belonging to none.”
If you could eavesdrop on what the people in your closest circle say about you posthumously, would you be surprised by their final analysis? To be sure, our earlier days of great passion for God after experiencing his miracles is no guarantee of future intimacy with Him and faithfulness to Him. Our circumstances do not remain stagnant, and life has a way of testing our mettle. The apostle Paul, in his letters to followers, expressed a measure of personal disappointment with a certain Demas, whom he first introduced in Philemon 1:23-24 as a ‘fellow worker’. To Paul, Demas was treated as a like-minded ministry assistant and a trusted travel companion. Yet further along in their relationship, Paul mentioned a more detached and passive Demas in Colossians 4:14 (NASB), “Luke, the beloved physician, send you his greetings, and also Demas’. Finally, in 2 Timothy 4:9-10, Paul said that Demas had left him and gone to Thessalonica.
Clearly, consistency was not Demas’ hallmark. He started strong with all the outward evidence of commitment to Paul’s ministry, but drifted away over time while still remaining in his company. It can happen to anyone of us – outwardly we keep up the appearance of fellowship but deep inside, we are pulled away by our personal agendas and paying less attention to what matters to God.
This can be attributed to three likely causes:
BEING OVER-FAMILIAR WITH GOD
When we think we already know how God works and we respond to preachers’ sermons like a self-appointed critic. When we treat devotionals and the Word of God with a lightheartedness devoid of curiosity. When we no longer take any prophetic word seriously but only the parts that sound good to us. When we quote God like we know His mind yet we don't pay attention to what the Holy Spirit wants to teach us. When we treat God’s communities like 7-Eleven stores, stepping in and out as long as we get what we want on each visit.
UNREPENTENT SINS
Hidden and unconfessed sins make us uncomfortable being up close with God and His people. After Adam and Eve committed the first human sin in the Garden of Eden, they felt uncomfortable being approached by God. Instantly, they were also embarrassed to be seen by each other in their own spiritual and physical nakedness. Ironically, if God had not approached them after they had sinned, their hearts would soon grow cold and resentful towards their Creator.
FOMO
When we indulge in obsessive comparisons with others, we let humans set the standard for what our commitment to God looks like. In all likelihood, being the disciple of a persecuted mission soon lost its appeal to Demas. Today, the fear of embarrassment and missing out on life opportunities can hold us back from taking the necessary risks with God for a deeper relationship with Him.
Instead of feeling contented and fulfilled, we despise normal responsibilities like holding down a stable income-generating employment, being a good and responsible parent, choosing to live in sexual purity, and being a faithful follower of Jesus Christ because they do not sound as exciting and grand as what people are doing out there.
THREE THINGS we must do to counter-act these unproductive behaviours:
1 . SURRENDER PERSONAL AGENDAS
Not all of our ‘spiritual’ agendas stand up to scrutiny. When placed under close examination, they will reveal self-serving plots, unchecked assumptions, and ambiguous identities (flawed narratives about self that we buy into). Such personal agendas are not God-centred, and any unsurrendered broken agendas will creep up on us to pull us away from living a God-centred lifestyle and enjoying life-building relationships.
Here is a quick self-check: Will you still be content with God even when you are not getting everything you hope for and living with unresolved pain and unfulfilled dreams until the day you die? To singles, will you still be committed to Jesus if there is no marriage (or remarriage) on the cards?
The threats to our spiritual well-being are real and ongoing. In Galatians 5:7-9, Paul warned some believers who apparently had a strong start about being lured away from God by persuasive ideologies and what they thought were acceptable compromises, asserting that “a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.”
In plain words, Paul urged them, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world… let nothing and no one hinder our walk and relationship with the Lord” and “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” (1 John 2:15-16, Galatians 5:16).
We must not let the protection of our personal interests become more important than what we will give up for God to take greater importance in our lives.
2. EXERCISE SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES
More than ever, prayer, reading the Word of God (the Bible), and worship are all unnegotiable disciplines for any disciple of Jesus Christ today.
We must stop assuming we know God well and start asking the Holy Spirit to reveal God to us when we read the Bible. We must internalize the Truth in the Word of God to sharpen our discernment about what is truth and what is falsehood so that we can dispel persuasive lies and wrong thinking inside us that no one sees. We need to fill our minds with worship instead of giving the enemy unlimited airtime in our heads.
There are simply no substitutes for these disciplines. They help us to mitigate the conflict between our obedience to God and our opinions having too much dominance in our lives. We cannot continue to happily dip our toes in the water with God but stop short of going all in with Him – risking all that is important to us for all that is important to Him.
God desires permanence for our relationship with Him. He is not pleased with trial relationships, crisis stops, or weekend visits with Him. “My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me” and “If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 10:27, John 15:5).
3. BE ACCOUNTABLE TO SPIRITUAL LEADERS
At the same time, we need the grace and humility to ask for and be open to counsel to keep our faith strong and uncompromised. No one - whatever our age, personality or qualifications - should be walking our faith journey alone. We need honest truth (without wordy mollycoddling!) by people who are invested in our growth and spiritual journey. This means that we must continue to cultivate an acquired taste for what is palatable to our spiritual being, so that we may “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8).
Anyone of us can get rusty from the over-use and reliance on set ways of thinking and doing things that can limit God’s power from working in our lives. Having a pattern of predictable response can be a tell-tale sign that we are stuck in repetitive cycles that impede our experience of personal breakthroughs. Just saying that we all fall short in some ways should not become an excuse for behaving poorly.
Therefore, it is a mistake to isolate ourselves from others, exercise only self-help and think we can become self-made disciples of Jesus Christ. Avoiding soul-baring conversations and intimacy in friendships with safe people will only stymie our own spiritual experience. “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” is not simply a nice adage to display on the fridge door while we keep our vulnerabilities locked in cold storage. The Bible tells us, “Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” (Proverbs 27:17, James 5:16). Arguably, “If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.” (Ecclesiastes 4:10).
When we fall, we must not hide. And we must not also avoid people whom God will send to approach us in His grace.
At the end of his life, Paul was able to articulate with some level of confidence about his tumultuous life, “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:6-7).
It is interesting that people will first remember how other people died before they talk about how they lived. The final event could be an earthquake, an air crash, a road accident, a heart attack, an aggressive cancer, or in their sleep. But what would the final chapter of your life read like in relation to your walk with God? In the now available private letters to Reverend Michael van der Peet, the widely revered Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mother Theresa, revealed an intense loneliness and an inability to feel the presence of Jesus in her life although He seemed very real to others, highlighting “the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor”. (Time, 2007).
This crisis of faith that Mother Theresa experienced in the later years of her life is not uncommon to many of us, yet it is not something that we have to take to our graves, so to speak. Starting today, let’s take the necessary steps to edit our personal epitaph and create a legacy of no regrets.
This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BIR Session held on 29 March 2025.
