REDEEMING CIRCUMSTANCE:
A friend of mine is an LPC, Licensed Professional Counselor, and he works with clients on areas such as anxiety, trauma, and depression. He shared with me that his philosophy / approach to counseling is to help guide clients to the root of emotions because “Emotions produce thoughts, and thoughts produce behaviors.”
In stark contrast to this healthy therapeutic approach, most of the self-help books out there do more harm than good. They merely instruct people to change superficial behaviors through “positive thinking.” The primary problem is that self-help “experts” never get close to the root issue, which goes well beyond our thoughts - and even beyond our emotions - to the source of what causes them...
I pondered that for some time and initially concluded that circumstances are the root cause of emotions. For example, if we’re out on a date our emotions might be joy, excitement, happiness, or contentment. Contrastingly, if we’re stuck in line at the DMV we might experience frustration, anger, bitterness, or apathy. But even circumstances was insufficient as the root issue because people can react very differently in the exact same situations.
Reality dictates that circumstance is what’s happening around us. Therefore, circumstance doesn’t have to define us unless we allow it. How is it that two people experiencing the exact same thing can react so differently? So when you dig deeper we can see that it goes even beyond circumstance.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.” It might be easy to think that when Paul talks about the “sufferings of Christ” he’s referring primarily or exclusively to the list of sufferings in 2 Cor 11:23-27, “in harder labor, in more imprisonments, in worse beatings, in frequent danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked. I spent a night and a day in the open sea. In my frequent journeys, I have been in danger from rivers and from bandits, in danger from my countrymen and from the Gentiles, in danger in the city and the country, in danger on the sea and among false brothers, in labor and toil and often without sleep, in hunger and thirst and often without food, in cold and exposure..." But Paul didn’t stop at those externals. In v.28 Paul goes on to write, “Apart from these external trials, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.”
All of those things were mere circumstance - whether the external trials of situations or the internal trials of dealing with broken people and the pressures of ministry - things were relentlessly happening around and to Paul. But here’s the kicker: Paul refused to be defined by the beatings, sufferings, trials, tumult, and pressures of either external or internal circumstances; instead Paul was unswayable in his resolve to be exclusively defined by his obedience to - and faith in - Christ.
We think that Jesus was using hyperbole when he said, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”
Ask yourself this probative question: “Have I truly died to self and renounced all rights to my life?” Noodle that for a while and see what you come up with.
Do you wake up most days resolutely praying something like, “Lord Jesus, today I will take up my cross and follow you, and I will rejoice in those sufferings!”
Saul became Paul on the road to Damascus. From that point on Paul’s identity was clearly no longer his own. This spurred him on to write, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul’s identity was exclusively sourced in and determined by his faith in Jesus.
Sufferings are unavoidable in this life, but circumstance can’t touch the identity of those made new in Christ.
Paul’s faith was definitively and overtly grounded and founded in his encounter with the risen Christ - even to the extent that whether starving, shipwrecked, rejected, ridiculed, beaten, or imprisoned - the fruit of the Spirit has never ceased to produce abundantly through him.
Jesus said, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Most of us use this as the segway into prosperity gospel living and pray things like, “I want a big house, the lotto numbers, a nice boat, some jet-skis, and front row season tickets... Oh, and of course I’ll give some to the church too,” as we secretly cross our fingers behind our backs.
Contrastingly, Paul understood what Jesus really meant so he prayed, “I want to know Christ - yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.”
Like death row inmates, few of us ever get beyond our circumstances. Paul addressed this when he wrote, “and everything that does not come from faith is sin.” Tragically, we snatch and grasp at the glimmer of hope - that by manipulating, tweaking, and massaging our circumstances we won’t really have to surrender, die, obey, and follow Christ. Ultimately we unveil our lives as those of sin rather than of authentic faith.
Circumstance produces emotions, emotions produce thoughts, thoughts produce behaviors... and, apart from Christ, those behaviors merely produce a set of ever degrading, perpetually devolving, degenerating, disparaging, demeaning, and ultimately eternally depraved circumstances, i.e. Hell.
Striving for a life apart from sufferings is a fantastic, unrealistic, pipe dream ripe with foolery and utter poppycock. If fame, security, money, power, prestige, and popularity were anything more than vapors and illusions - then why are the rock stars, movie stars, sports heroes, and celebrities doped up with anti-anxiety meds, speed, and painkillers? Why are they drowning in their own vomit, slashing their wrists, and hanging themselves from rafters?
Circumstance is transformed in our lives, as it was with Paul, exclusively through a life-giving, life-changing, and life-defining encounter with the risen Christ.
Through faith, circumstance ceases to merely be that which is happening to us and is instead redeemed by our obedience to Christ in us.
In Christ, sufferings are not only anticipated and endured, but in fact become our joy for what Christ is doing in them and producing through us with them.
We all experience difficult circumstances in life - without exception. They produce emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, and a never-ending cycle of new circumstances. They can either perpetually devolve as we live sinful disconnected lives of rebellion against our Creator, or they can be redeemed for the praise and glory of God as we die to self, pick up our cross, joyfully participate in His sufferings, and obediently follow Jesus.
So how are you responding to the circumstances in your life? Is it with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? That’s what Paul was addressing when he wrote, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you--unless, of course, you fail the test?”
Are the circumstances of your life producing emotions, thoughts, and behaviors that are being redeemed in Christ, or are you stuck in the death-spiral of autonomy - tragically, and insanely, believing that today things might get better with a little tweak here - a little adjustment there - if only your circumstances were different.
The problem with that approach is this: no matter where you go - there you are.
Blessings,
-Kevin M. Kelley
aMostUnlikelyDisciple.com
