Monday, May 31, 2010

Pressing Onward Using THE Secret (not ‘The Secret’)

“Pressing onward, pushing every hindrance aside out of my way... I want to know you more.”

~Andy Park, In the Secret.

“In the secret, in the quiet place, I want to know you more.” This is gospel way. But it’s the way of the gospel presented immediately above that clung fast to my heart-thought recently; isn’t it peculiar how a song we’ve sung many times hits us like new suddenly.

Let’s go further in.

There is a golden Christian imperative in the mix of the above lyrics. But it’s not simply for the one accepting Christ now, for its purpose is so urgently for everyone. It’s the best way to live a life that would continually crush and undermine us, conforming us cruelly and without hope much of the time.

This is how it works:

There are calamities we have that promise to sweep over us, sprinkled over our time they are.

These are situations and people in our midst that want their way with us, beyond any thought for us.

Our divine task, should we choose to accept it, is to press onward in faith, pushing every hindrance aside—in the fashion of Jesus—and in this to know him; to know what to do, and critically, how he would have us do it.

And when we conquer the first of these calamitous challenges, sometimes taking a year or more, we see for the first time that this is the way through. Whilst it was a huge struggle, it was perfectly the way as we look back now, God teaching situation by situation as we went.

“Yes,” we thought, this is faith.” He required us to do certain things at certain times and we did everything methodically, one after the other, learning to ‘know’ him more, time after minute-long time. We might’ve stumbled even, but we did not fall.

Using this method of listening to God’s Spirit speak in and through our situations we learned more about ourselves and fixing our once-interminable weaknesses than ever before.

Then, Reality Bites!

We derived confidence, but not only that, we suddenly noticed how many years of life we still had to run—pressing onward to the place he’s calling us to—and how many of these challenging situations and people we’ve yet to encounter.

For a moment we shrank. It was too much for us.

“Can I do it again, Lord?” was the doubting momentary sentiment deep in our spirits. Then we felt the warmth of God’s assuring smile heartening our spirits to hope again.

Like riding a bike is, we find this love so easy to live—joyously, courageously—as we rest in the heart of God. Obeying God is not a hard thing to do when we have a deep desire to know him.

God is the only way I know to be victorious the right way, every time. I’m really not sure anything can beat that.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

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