Security out of Risk
“Honesty before God requires the most fundamental risk of faith we can take; the risk that God is good, that God does love us unconditionally. It is in taking the risk that we rediscover our dignity. To bring the truth to ourselves, just as we are, to God, just as God is, is the most dignified thing we can do in this life.” – Gordon May.
A correct interpretation of reality is becoming a more uncommon experience in the consciousness of man. Ego, subjectivism, agenda, and opinion have taken the wheel and put objective truth, experience tempered with education, and goodness without commendation in the back seat. There is a battle for presenting the truth in our lives. There is a war for being honest about ourselves, honest with ourselves, and honest about our desires and intentions. The everlasting struggle for self spills over into understanding our true existence in light of God. In this conflict, we end up being the casualties of our own pursuits, our efforts at controlling the world around us and our lack of reality. Much of this stems from a self-empowered view of control in our lives. We try to master the situations around us, at many times to our demise, our frustration, our separation from others; leading to the deviation of reality and securing control over our self-focused interpretation or recollection of experiences and people around us, which are not accurate. The dilemma in lieu of this is our inability to access the true reality of God’s control and not our own dominance of will. This struggle is a main focus that must always be confronted, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Honesty with ourselves in front of the Father reflects our reliance upon his sovereign control. With this power over the universe, in which relying on this is the risk of faith, we actually become infused with the awareness of his goodness and deeply changed by the unconditional love of the Father. As we grow in our dependence upon his control, we begin to understand our true security in the Glorious Savior, and we discover our dignity restored in being sons and daughters of the Most High.
The transforming nature is only embraced when we truly understand the worthiness of the Father in faith. He is not a salesman, giving us a 30 day money back guarantee if He is not faithful. It is also not a quick fix scheme for getting the “desired results” for only minutes a day. We embrace Him as He truly is and in a true understanding of reality, find an unconditionally loving and faithful Father. We are changed by our interaction with his true self. Honestly and deeply interacting with the Savior of the world is what enacts his heart changing ours to emulate and desire Him. This is the transformation of becoming a new creation in Christ.
The hard part is that we like our current grip on reality. As fallible humans, we like the illusion; the misperception of our control. What becomes difficult is the process of discipline and brokenness we must go through to find God just as he is. Hebrews 12 and 13 talk about the process of going through the hardships which restore one’s perspective on God and the reality of his intention for our good, and the ability to know Him and share in his holiness. “Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” Know that as Christ is working in your heart, shaking your grip loose of yourself and your misperceptions about Him. He is securing an unshakeable faith and steadfast confidence in the One who came to seek and to save those who are lost. Deeply knowing and radically defining yourself within this context changes your agenda with the world around you. It also allows you to understand the Lordship of God and respond to Him as his adopted sons and daughters. In this we know that God is good and loves us unconditionally. The path we follow to understand Him as He truly is, will take us through hardship, discipline, brokenness – stripping us of our need for our own illusory control and our faulty perceptions of ourselves and God. Through all of this we can remember that He is faithful to his promises, “Never will I leave you; Never will I forsake you. That you should say with confidence: The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”
Risk that He is good. Risk that He loves you unconditionally. You will discover that these truths redefine your reality and will come to characterize your life in your identity of adoption in the family of Christ. You are loved; you are secure and incredibly alive in the care of the Almighty. His reality is worthy of our faithfulness and his faithfulness is the definition of our reality.