A Totally Different Way To Do Life

The Breach. Jesus has come to show us how to live, but first we must die. We cannot live until we have died.

Now, before you stop reading, consider this: Why is it that life doesn’t work for us? When will life and its circumstances come to be at peace with our expectations for it? What are we to do with a life that seems to want to betray us? And even if we could grasp a better way to live, just how do we do it?

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Life doesn’t work because we haven’t yet acknowledged the devil at work. A Christian’s character is to expect testing and temptations in this world.

When we get out of bed of a morning delirious with content because of the tests and temptations God will ask us to endure in his name, then we are blessed with the capacity to overcome. God would never compel us to overcome. We only overcome when we desire to overcome, because Jesus has overcome for us for all eternity.

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Life and its circumstances will come to be at peace with our expectations as soon as we fit our expectations to the nature of life, first. Not the other way around. We will forever be disappointed if we are the bearers of our own expectations.

Dying to self is the wisdom of realigning all our expectations to God’s agenda.

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Does life seem bent on betraying us? It can seem that way.

But what does life truly owe us? We are given life on a silver platter, and yet we begrudge the very things we are given. We are given possessions to steward and work to do. The former we delight in to possess, but we are to hold them loosely. The latter we enjoy because tasks are only relevant as channels of relational connection.

There really is no betrayal but our own coveting. Our complaints are a betrayal of God’s eternal grace that has gifted us with something as wonderful as life.

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So even if we could grasp a better way to live, just how are we going to do it?

We must expect that life will test and tempt us. As we train ourselves in the awareness of the tests and temptations everywhere, we begin to become more aware.

If we dispel the foolish rationale that life is supposed to make us happy, we may then find a purpose and a meaning beyond happiness. Then we realise life is about dying to self so we can live (truly) for Christ – the only and the ultimate satisfaction.

© 2015 S. J. Wickham.