THREE CHAIRS

[8-minute read]

People spend an inordinate amount of time sitting. Once out of bed, we sit to have breakfast, sit on the commute to work, sit in the office, sit for lunch, sit for dinner, sit to watch TV and then it’s bedtime again.

Few of us pay attention to how we sit and what we sit on. During the lockdowns of COVID-19, many worked while sitting in bed, on couches and dining chairs which are not designed for adequate support of our bodies for prolonged sitting. However, over time, our preferred chair becomes second nature to us, and we conclude that living with aches and pain is the new normal without examining what we are relying on for support.

The same can be said for the chairs we sit on in our faith journey. Three types of chairs will always be around - the chair of complacency, the chair of compromise and the chair of commitment. The chair that becomes most used and prominent in our lives will determine the quality of our relationship with Jesus and others. What these chairs are, is not determined by their aesthetics or functionality, but by what we become when we spend time sitting on them. Using the wrong chair can slowly destroy us and lead us away from God and the faith community.

What difference do these three chairs make in our faith journey?

THE CHAIR OF COMPLACENCY

In this chair, you are generally happy lounging around in life. You prefer a laissez-faire approach towards your relationship with God and others, and often make self-congratulatory mental notes about how far you have come in life, feeling confident that nothing will go wrong because you have ‘learnt your lessons’ and graduated from new inputs and growth. Your life lacks urgency  for your God-given mission but you are happy to push the boundaries to advance self-interest. You are the armchair Christian, always keen to know what’s happening in other people’s lives, you ask for updates and you love to comment but do little else. From a detached distance, you are never really involved or present with anyone in their time of need. Because you are reluctant to make a public stand for God, you hardly make any impact on anyone or anything.

Scripture from 2 Samuel 11:1 tells us that during a season “when kings go off to war” and military confidence was high, King David sent out his best general and the entire military while he stayed behind, tucked in the safety and security at home. When not in use, David’s God-given confidence turned into a complacency. Instead of serving God’s mission outside, he decided to stay home and serve himself. A dissonance soon grew that kept him restless by day and sleepless by night. He might have excused himself from being in the frontline of a war but another war was waging inside of him. So he did what most of us would do to ease the tension within – he sought a change of environment. He headed to the rooftop for a change of scene (2 Samuel 11:2-5)! 

In the chair of complacency, David was unaware that he became the target of God’s Enemy on home ground. This time, the unseen Enemy was far more formidable than the most capable of his military opponents and was gunning for the devotion of the man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14). How well did the Enemy succeed? Well, before the war even ended, David had slept with the enchantingly beautiful Bathsheba, and she conceived from that affair. Both were married to other people at that time.

It was a total wipeout on his home base. Satan 1 – David 0.

David thought home was a safe place. Unguarded, he was easily disarmed by the enemy and fell right into the enemy’s trap. In the same way, if we are not on guard against the enemy’s deceptions and schemes, we will underestimate our vulnerability and fall right into the trappings of a misplaced self-confidence. What we think will make our life fulfilling and safe will eventually lead to a decline in the quality of our relationship with God and others. No one will be around to warn us because we are deluding ourselves that all is well. Yet, the ‘good life’ in the chair of complacency will become a prison to those who do not move out of it.

A hard reality will hit us as the warning goes in Amos 6:7, “Suddenly, all your parties will end.”

THE CHAIR OF COMPROMISE

The riveting story of Samson and Delilah is often presented to children and adults as a warning not to disobey God’s simple instructions. For backdrop, Samson was dedicated to God when his barren mother conceived (Judges 13:5). He lasted 20 years as God’s anointed judge (or a military leader) over Israel (Judges 15:20). And all he had to do to keep his power was to avoid going for a haircut.

So how did he fall? Not in the hair salon.

He was a man with great public victories and crushing personal setbacks. He stepped into an enemy territory looking for a respite. Judges 16 opened with an account of Samson showing up in a red-light district in Gaza. The enemy of our soul moves fast and does not waste time on unnecessary emotional foreplay to stage our downfall. In quick succession, Samson slept with a prostitute when he was in Gaza, and we read two verses later that he was smitten by another local woman named Delilah. He likely thought, “She’s just a woman; what harm can she do to me?”

In reality, ‘The rulers of the Philistines’ immediately saw Delilah as a trusted ally to take down Samson. If they could not take him down in the battlefield, they could knock him out in the bedroom. Delilah performed her role in the plot well: she spent time talking and playing with Samson (v6-14), made him feel desired, stroked his ego and boosted his esteem.

However, when all that failed to achieve what she wanted, she resorted to emotional blackmail and ‘tormented him with her nagging day after day until he was sick to death of it.’ (v15-16). Finally, Samson succumbed in what he thought was a ‘safe space’. He did what he should never ever do and revealed to Delilah the secret of his God-given strength: ‘If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man.’

The outcome: Satan 1 – Samson 0.

When we are over-confident on the enemy’s turf, we will find ourselves in a place of compromise.

What did Samson compromise? He went to the wrong places for comfort and compromised his devotion to God. He compromised his position of leadership as Israel’s judge and instantly became an object of scorn and ridicule before the Philistines. Both Samson and David faced the same downfall.  

Let this be a reminder that there is no place for the chair of complacency and compromise anywhere in a believer’s life. Colossians 3:5 puts it bluntly: ‘put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.’

CHAIR OF COMMITMENT

This is a chair that Goldilocks would not have picked for comfort and appeal. It offers all the benefits of sustainability but does not necessary offer immediate satisfaction. Two Bible characters stood out for making this their chair of preference! They are Joseph and Daniel.

Since young, Joseph suffered one injustice after another that would give him justification to live with hatred and vengeance. Yet, he stayed put in the seat of commitment, even when he was thrown into oblivion. He stood by God and sat in prison – how about that? And even when he had the positional and relational power (or ‘friends with benefits’) to get even or elevate himself and his family, he never exploited it.

What about yourself? Who do you become when you face deep injustice? Do you leave the chair of commitment to take matters into your own hands, or do you continue to honour God and trust that His goodness will come through for you as you remain single-minded in your commitment to Him?

Then, there was Daniel who came from a family of nobility and was handpicked (or ‘headhunted’) to serve the King’s palace (Daniel 1:3-4). His elite education and family social capital would set him up for life and he did not need to do anything else to stand out of the crowd. Yet, he chose to decline the royal spread of food and wine in the King’s palace in preference of a more austere diet. In fact, he went so far as to pose this challenge to his palace attendant: ‘“Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.”’ (v12-13). Sure enough, ten days later, Daniel emerged from the God-honouring simple diet looking better than the others who had feasted royally!

When God’s standard clashes with the traditional thinking and cultural practices of the day, standing your ground will not be something that is easy to stomach but it is a spiritual discipline that will nourish your soul. As a result of Daniel’s steadfast obedience to God, he was promoted to the highest office (Daniel 6:1-3) and so distinguished himself that his peers became jealous and zealous of an opportune time to take him down (Daniel 6:3-5).

Indeed, Godly obedience alone would make you stand out. In the ultimate test of his faith in God, Daniel found God’s protection when he was thrown into the lions’ den and emerged unharmed (Daniel 6:22). Resultingly, King Darius, relieved that Daniel had survived, reversed an earlier decree and ordered ‘that in every part of my kingdom people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel’ (Daniel 6:26-27).

Which chair are you sitting on today? If you sense that you are in the wrong chair, it does not matter how right it feels or how good you look, resolutely ask God to teach you how to shift out and move into the chair of commitment.

This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BIR Session held on 11 March 2023.