“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” Job 13:15
Have you ever experienced a crisis in your life? A point where it seemed as though the very ground you stood on was crumbling and falling away, and you were left grasping thin air? A point where all you ever built your life upon, your hopes, your dreams, your plans, your securities, all seemed to crumble away before your eyes, leaving you empty and devastated? A point where all you ever rested on was gone?
If you have, then you would know that feeling is terrible. It is like standing on top of a ship in the middle of a vast ocean which suddenly begins to sink. You desperately climb to the top of the ship and cling there for dear life, yet you are only delaying the inevitable; every moment you are sinking closer to the water. There seems to be no hope, you cry in despair. What then should you do?
There are those who think that once you come to know God, there will be no more crises in life, life will be a bed of roses. You will live a life abundant in God’s blessings, always happy and comfortable. I think you could not be further from the truth. Look to reality and you will see that many Christians today, especially the most devout ones, face and are facing these crises. Look to the past and you will see the great servants of God all faced crises in their lives. Allow me to share why I believe these crises are so important in our Christian lives and how is it we must respond to them.
Your journey as a Christian does not end at salvation. It only just begins. We often call Christ our Lord and Saviour. And indeed when you are saved, Christ becomes your Saviour. But He has yet to become your Lord. In the 4 spiritual laws booklet there is a little diagram that shows a throne. When you are on it, life is all messed up. But when Christ is on it, then all things fall into place. But we must face up to the truth that we can come to Christ and believe in Him and be saved, and yet still remain on the throne of our hearts.
How so? If Christ is truly Lord that He is in total sovereign control of our lives. He tells us how to live it, He tells us what is important, He tells us what to do, He tells us how to spend our time. And we obey. Now let us ask ourselves, who is in control of my life? And before we jump to the happy conclusion- God!- let’s think again. Who decides what is important in our lives? Who decides how we spend our time? Who decides the things we give our time and energy too? Who is control of our relationships, our work, our money? Where does my security in life come from? What do I depend on? Who has the final say in everything? Much more often than we like to admit, the answer is ME.
We are still on the throne. And the fact of the matter is that we will remain comfortably there until something or other jolts us out of it. The thing is, we may not even know it, we may think we are living very devoted lives to God, but in reality God knows better, He knows that deep inside we are still in control. Deep inside our security is in things other than Him, deep inside our desires are for things other than Him. We rejoice we have found forgiveness and salvation for our sins, but at the same time we deep down inside we are rejoicing in a lot of other things that are not of Him. Repeatedly I have found in my life that the things that I want, my hopes and dreams, the way I think I should live my life, and so forth, are always not the same as what God wants for me.
But that cannot remain the case if Christ is going to be on the throne. That is why Jesus’ preaching never ended at salvation. “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Matt 16:24-25. Luke’s gospek puts it this way- “And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple….whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:27,33. Deny himself, take up his cross and follow Jesus. If you remember what it was like for Jesus to take up the Cross, it was a crisis in his life that nothing we ever experience can compare to. He was going to lose everything, He was even going to be abandoned by His Father, whom He was one with. And we are called to follow in that example.
That is where the crises in our lives come in. Crises shake the foundations of our throne. The things that we have depended on and placed our security in for so long are suddenly falling away, and it makes us painfully realize really how dependent we are upon them. The control of our lives slowly slips out of our hands and we are made to realize for the first time how afraid we are to lose control. Slowly and surely we are aware that we are being nudged off the throne, and our first instinctive reaction is to struggle to get back on. We refuse to get off. But if we don’t get off, then how is Christ ever going to be there? He is Saviour, but He is not yet Lord.
Job is one person who experienced a real crisis in his life, and what a crisis it was! Read Job 1 for yourself. In the space of 24 hours he had lost his entire family, all his servants, his house, his flocks, everything. He had been afflicted with painful boils all over his body. His wife herself told him- “Curse God and die!”, implying that it was better for him to die than live in this state. But three verses from his mouth summarize the response that we must have to crises- “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21. “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” Job 13:15. “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin in destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God.” Job 19:25-26. Job erred in other areas, but this part He got right- in the midst of his tribulation, he still acknowledged that God was on the throne in total sovereign control of his life. His faith in God never wavered, and he accepted what the Lord had done in his life and let Him do it.
Our crises may be very different in nature, but our response must be the same. Some people when faced with crises think that God will overcome the crises and restore things to the way they were originally, and that is victory. And when it doesn’t happen they lose their faith and backslide, they think that God has somehow disappeared from their lives. He hasn’t! On the contrary the crises is the very point where God is coming to prominence in our lives, the point where He is knocking us off the throne and take His rightful place there! It is the potential point of breakthrough, the turning point which will catapult us to a true life of discipleship!
But- and this is the crucial point- what comes out of the crises is dependent upon our response. There is a choice we must make. And that is why Jesus’ call to discipleship, to take up the Cross, in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, always comes with an IF. “IF anyone desires to come after me…” We can respond by desperately clinging on to our hopes and dreams, and praying that God will restore them and spare us the crises, the pain. Then we will miss the point, miss out on the chance of a lifetime. Or we can choose to see beyond our hurt and pain and understand what God is really doing, that He is taking His place on the throne, and let Him do so, no matter how much it hurts. Let go of it all. Let go of all your desires and say to God, like Jesus did in the Garden, “Not my will but Yours be done.” No matter how painful, willingly say that to Him. Acknowledge that you are now no longer in control of your life, but He is, and you are willing to let that be. Do all that you can to let go.
Imagine yourself on top of the sinking ship again. As you sink everything in you will scream to you to pray for God to deliver you, to somehow stop the ship from sinking. And yet the very crux of Jesus’ call to discipleship is this, no matter how unbelievable it may sound- let yourself sink and die, and you will be born again into a life of true discipleship, where He is on the throne. “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Listen to what A.W. Tozer writes, "A man with a Cross has no control of his destiny. There is only one thing to do- to move on to the point of crucifixion."
Are you willing to die to your desires, to let God take control? The crises brings you to that point, and now the choice is yours. You can choose to reject the suffering and pain and turn back, and God will not stop you. It’s always an IF. But IF you should choose to bear the pain and die to your desires once and for all and let Him take control, then He will ascend to the throne, and soon you will find that all the pain was worth it. Because when He is on the throne, your life will become more abundant than it has ever been.
Once Christ ascends the throne, then a great change has occurred. Now He has the final say in everything. He tells me how to live my life, what to live for, what to do, how to spend my time, what to give my time and energy to, what to value, how to handle my relationships, money, etc. The whole point is that He is now in control. I still have my own hopes and dreams and desires, but the difference now is that I have learnt to bring them to submission to His will. His will overrides all. It is no longer what I want, but what He wants. And my greatest desire that overrides all else is to know Him and His will; to know and obey. Christ is now both Saviour and Lord. If this occurs, then you know you have heeded the call, and are now walking the path as Christ’s disciple.
The apostle Paul understood this in his life, and he wrote- “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ…” Phil 3: 7-8. Read the whole of Philippians 3 for yourself and meditate upon the words; it is a true disciple of Christ speaking.
And the amazing thing is that once He is on the throne, you will find that you have not lost anything at all. In fact just as Jesus promised, once you have lost your life for His sake, then you will truly find it. In the words of a poem, “I got nothing I asked for, but everything that I hoped for. I am among men most richly blessed.” Just today I heard someone share- “Nothing ever goes according to my will, but God answers all my hopes and dreams, in His way.” I myself will testify to that, that when He is on the throne, He blesses in many awesome ways, far greater than anything I have ever found for myself when He was not there. Everything truly falls into place in amazing fashion; it is so amazing and beautiful that so many times in my life I can only stand in awe and humbly offer up a prayer of thanksgiving. But amidst the blessings, the difference is that where you did it your way before, He does it His way now. He is in control.
But again to put things in perspective, which is crucial, we must always remember that the whole point of our life is that He must be on the throne. The blessings in themselves are not the end, they are simply meant to help draw us closer to Him. And truly all these blessings cannot compare to the greatest blessing of all, the greatest need of all that He has answered- and that is to know Him as Lord. And always we must ensure that He remains on the throne, in sovereign control; we take whatever He gives, and we give whatever He takes. Even if He should take away all His blessings while on the throne, I would still rejoice and be glad, because He is Lord, and He is having His way! The true lesson that you would have learnt at that point is that it is not the gifts that matter, but the Giver. If you have found the Giver, then you have found all. In knowing Him and knowing His will for your life, your life becomes complete. “Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord…”
The call to discipleship is seldom heard in churches today, and yet it is so crucial. If you are facing a crisis now like that I have described, or if you ever do, I pray that you will have the right perspective and make the right response. The one that will lead you to Christ, the one that will put Him on the throne. The one that will make Him Lord.
I bow my knee before Your throne
I know my life is not my own
I offer up a song of praise
To bring you pleasure Lord
I seek the Giver not the gift
My heart’s desire is to lift
You high above all earthly kings
To bring you glory Lord
