VICTORIOUS LIVING – THE BATTLE IS NOT YOURS
(5-minute read)
IN CONVERSATION, we often ask people about outcomes. When someone makes a career change, we enquire about the new job situation. When someone is charged in court, we are curious about the sentencing. After a medical procedure, we ask about the new prognosis. Following a divorce, we are curious about the settlement. We show far more interest in what comes out of any situation than we have concern about how someone is going through their personal ordeals.
It is problematic to think that if obedience is a believer's responsibility, and all outcomes belong to God, then God is in the outcome and the outcome is all that matters. So we leave people alone to walk out of their trials and hope that they will find God in the process. In doing so, we forget that life in the middle of a trial (although one should not remain stuck in it) is a large chunk of God’s victory story that we should not downplay.
Guest speaker, Joel Tan, brought our attention back to the middle, to remind us that those who obey God can be assured of a life of victory and power. Notably, the most impactful fellowship also happens in the messy, lonely and difficult middle. Why? Because victorious Christian living does not depend on one’s personality, background or education, but it's about self-abandonment and learning to fight hardships on our knees in surrender to God. With someone alongside, people find the strength to worship God even as they are beset with wicked problems; they will pray with faith in God's Word even when all they see around them only make them feel defeated; and they will find new resolve to surrender to God instead of trying to pull themselves together to face each day.
What are your challenges today? What is blocking you from seeing the future that God has on the drawing board for your life? Don’t believe for a second that Christian fellowship is about passing out Scriptures for self-care. Like our guest speaker, Joel, all of us have battle stories to remind each other that no matter how bleak it looks, no matter how discouraging it sounds, no matter how helpless we feel about our future, God wants us to trust Him in our battles for His best outcome.
But we have to give up the things that will block us from experiencing His victory. Give up thinking that we have to constantly fix things. Give up numbing ourselves with constant activities and find alone time to renew our minds in the Word of God and find God on our knees. Give up reacting to every trigger. It has been said that in some of the battles that we go through, we may not need to take action because not every weed in the garden of our life is meant for us to pull out.
The story of King Hezekiah offers biblical evidence that the size of our problem only proves the size of our God! It is a powerful narrative that will right-size any personal challenges we are experiencing. Here is a snapshot of King Hezekiah’s biography that is worthy of a slow read:
2 Kings 18
Verse 1
Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign.
Verse 3
He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.
Verse 5
Hezekiah trusted in the Lord.
Verse 6
He held fast to the Lord and did not stop following Him; he kept the commands the Lord had given.
Verse 7
The Lord was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook.
Verse 13
In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.
Verse 17
The king of Assyria sent his supreme commander, his chief officer and his field commander with a large army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem.
2 Kings 19
Verse 1
When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and went into the temple of the Lord.
Verse 6
Isaiah said, ‘This is what the Lord says: Do not be afraid of what you have heard—those words with which the underlings of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.
Verse 15
Hezekiah prayed to the Lord: “Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.
Verse 16
Give ear, Lord, and hear; open your eyes, Lord, and see; listen to the words that was sent to ridicule the living God.
Verse 35
That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp.
Verse 36
So the king of Assyria broke camp, withdrew and returned to Nineveh.
Verse 37
One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisrok, his sons Adrammelek and Sharezer killed him with the sword.
You may ask: can bad things happen to good people? Yes, bad things happen to all people. Do Christians struggle with setbacks in life and feel discouraged? Yes, our stories are about human vulnerability and weakness that find hope and help in God alone. We do not wear our faith in God as a moral badge but as a battle shield. Our peace is not found in the absence of a storm, but when we encourage each other to find it in the presence of God.
If you are going through a battle, do not stop believers who care about you from getting involved. There is no battle that God has not seen before. The Christian community is a battalion, not spectators. Getting involved in each other’s life fulfils our call to love our neighbours as ourselves. It goes beyond getting each other’s life updates: we are called to do life with each other to ensure that God’s outcomes will prevail for His glory alone.
This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BIR Session held on 21 October 2023.
