This time around the games meant less to me and I figured out why. I don’t compete, I don’t race, I don’t swim or run or jump for prizes. The projected “life parallel” that is associated with sports is not present with me in its many aspects as before. I have, like Paul, learned, to some degree, that I must be content, to handle living on this earth through a non-competitive attitude. Released from the inner “strive;” life begins at another’s conquest.
For the Olympics, contending is expedient – nothing wrong here. For jobs, careers, business, and living on the earth, tension is also good and may be essential. Nevertheless, at the heart level, all of the striving, battling, and contesting must leave off. “It is competitiveness that is at the very heart of pride” so says C.S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity.” The pride kind of strain is resisted by God.
Friends, many transfer the gaming view into their view of the Christian walk. They compete for favor from God, but find His resistance. Why? — because grace cannot be gained that way. Some struggle to please God as Cain did in Genesis, only to find rejection.
So, victories are still to be gone after, but for me, they come in the form of a realization of My Savior’s decisive winning. He won gold at His dying; the manifestation of His cross puts me on the winner’s podium. Personal achievement has to always submit to the benefits gained of His suffering. So, how has this change of viewpoint happened to me?
We gain perspective in trials, in tribulations, in the school of impasse. This, we learn at the college of failings, in the “own worst enemy,” being revealed. These come in the unearthing of personal rebellions, obstinacy, fears and doubts. We shrink back at our lack of character, our cowardess, our wimp.
Is God limited? No, but His people restricted Him, The Holy One of Israel. Quarreling, striving, disbelief, and impatience formed the stiff-necked people. They did lip service to God, their hearts were far from Him. But here is the great question: Why did I think that my humanity would be any different than theirs? My temptations of another sort?
There’s good news. Oswald Chambers says we can fail at every point and mental health requires that we know our weaknesses. These we must understand by trying and discovery. “If we have a purpose of our own, it destroys the simplicity and the calm, relaxed, pace which should be characteristic of the children of God.” Chambers.
“Sum up the life of Jesus by any other standard than God’s, and it is an anticlimax of failure.”
“What is God’s remedy for dejection at apparent failure in our labors? This – the assurance that God’s purpose cannot fail, that God’s plans cannot miscarry, that God’s will must be done. Our labors are not intended to bring about that which God has not decreed.” – A. W. Pink
In closing, God’s road is always a win, win. Who can blame us if we just want to be with Him on His road? “God called Jesus Christ to what seemed absolute disaster. And Jesus Christ called His disciples to see Him put to death, leading every one of them to the place where their hearts were broken. His life was an absolute failure from every standpoint except God’s. But what seemed to be failure from man’s standpoint was a triumph from God’s standpoint, because God’s purpose is never the same as man’s purpose.” Chambers.
“What God calls us to cannot be definitely stated, because His call is simply to be His friend to accomplish His own purposes. Our real test is in truly believing that God knows what He desires.” Fellows, He is winning, He has won. Saint, do not despair. You are just like the rest of us. Love ya
Thx P. Tom – a good word in a competitive world! We can be free to be who we are & not have to strive to be something different or better.