The Quest For Truth

It is a great moment when a soul surrenders to Christ. But the road does not suddenly become all sweet and nice. The fact is God begins to work in us now if we don’t resist Him. Yes, we can resist Him even after we give ourselves to Him. Because our free will is always there. God does not bring us into bondage. After we see how Christ suffered for us, we are now called into the fellowship of His sufferings. Christ suffered pain, rejection, humiliation, sorrow, and separation. We are called to suffer and experience His sufferings. It may not be appealing but this is the way we become like Him. The disciples counted it worthy to suffer for Him. Now our lives are not our own. We should not resist the dealings of God in our lives. Nothing happens to a Christian except what God allows. All things including persecutions and trials are for our good. We have to co-operate with Him to accomplish His will in our lives. The scars of Christ have to be planted in our lives. The Apostle Paul said, “From now on let no one trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” These were not just physical marks but the marks of the sufferings that Christ suffered. We can know him only by sharing in His sufferings. It is not imagining how He suffered for us but in reality experiencing how Christ suffered for us. Christ died on a cross and He gives us all a cross to pick up and follow Him. It is a path of pain but the joy of knowing this Person far exceeds all the pain that we might suffer. Therefore the Apostle James says, “Count it all joy…” When hardships and trials come our way we count it all joy. It may not be joyful when we are going through it but we know God will fashion us in the image of His Son as we come out of it by His grace.

When some people asked Jesus what they must do, the only reply they got was, “Believe in Me.” We are not only justified by faith but we are also sanctified by faith. Paul wrote to the Galatians, “Having begun in the Spirit are you now being perfected by the flesh” Gal. 3:3. The path to sanctification is believing that ‘Christ has been made unto us sanctification.’ Christ is our sanctification. We have to only believe that and rest from all our labors. Good works are produced by faith. James says, “Faith without works is dead.” Sincere faith produces godly works. The works that you are trying on your own strength will be possible only when faith is applied first. We do nothing to attain holiness. God does everything. Our part is to believe that. He has said, ‘I will give them a new heart and a new Spirit’ We hinder God when we try to do things with our own strength. Initially it may seem that you have to be passive. But when you receive from God in that way, He breathes his life and his holiness in us which stimulates us to good works. The working comes only after believing. We have to let go off our hands from ourselves. That is the only thing that God requires of you.

God is so much greater than our mistakes. He is a God of infinite love. His love makes him patient towards us. God is longsuffering and full of mercy. While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. And the blood of Christ still washes us from all our sins. It is not that God gives up on us. Most of the time it is us who give up on God. We cannot imagine a God who would love us so much despite everything. But God works slowly on us and in us Every prayer that we breathe takes us closer to Him. Every day we are drawing closer and closer to Love. The writer of Hebrews tells us to run the race with patience. Setbacks and failures should not let us down. God is always there to reach out His hand and pick us up again. If we could only believe in Him and His love. God is a God of Restoration because He is a God of Love.

When we talk about suffering, the words of Paul the Apostle comes to mind where he wrote, “The sufferings of our present time are not worth compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us.” Jesus endured the cross because of the joy that was set before Him. There is a reason behind the things we go through and though we may not always understand everything at that moment, the workings of God in our life are made clear as we come out of it. “All things work together for good.” That is what the saints have been believing all throughout the centuries. The Apostles called themselves, ‘bond servants of Christ.’ They were willing to endure everything for the Master’s sake. Their life was no longer theirs. It belonged to Another. Christ gave His life and everthing for us, we ought to give and endure everything for Him. If we see our sufferings in the context of our present earthly life, they may seem to be absolutely unjust and unfair. But in the context of eternity, we know that everything including suffering is for the glory of God and for our highest good. When he was struck and smitten, Job fell on his knees and blessed God. Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulations but be of good cheer I have overcome the world.” And we know that ‘many are the afflictions of the righteous.’ But in the light of eternity we can rejoice for we have been counted worthy to suffer for His name’s sake.

He who saves his life shall lose it and he who loses his life shall find it. The whole purpose of redemption is for man to surrender to the Divine. It is a demand for a complete and total surrender. A losing of life in order to find it. The process may be gradual but aboslutely necessary. As we die, we begin to sense we are coming alive. The life of God flows from within us as we let go of the old. It is a fall into the lake of life. A Divine exchange – life for death, blessings for curses, success for failure. As we learn to die, we learn to live.

Faith sees the unseen and reveals the unknown. Faith is taking God at his word. Holding and believing when things dont seem to be right. “Without faith no man can please God.” The vehicle that we use for our journey towards Truth is faith. Truth becomes real only after faith has been applied to it. Peter walked on water towards Truth when he stepped in faith in the water. Faith is the key that unlocks everything that we receive from God. It is the first truth we exercise before coming to God. For how can we come to God unless we first believe that He exists? And it is only by believing that everything becomes real. Truth is seen with the eyes of faith.

The book of Ecclesiastes says there is a time for everything under the sun. We may want to reach the finish line the fastest as in the Olympics but God does not work that way. He is not competing you against anyone. We go through the next stage in life only when we have learnt what we have to learn now. We may ofcourse rush ahead and miss everything but if we want God’s best we will always have to come back to what God is trying to teach us. The truths of God are ingrained into the very fabric of life itself so we cannot escape no matter what. Only when we embrace these truths for the moment will we enter the next phase in life that God has for us. There are seasons in life and they are all meant for us to grow.

Man has always wanted to be like God; to be perfect and blameless and always right. He has sought to be powerful and almighty. But no man till date has ever lived beyond his years. Death comes as the final blow to all our pride. God knows that we are dust. If we really knew ourselves, we would know how weak and powerless we really are. The psalmist said, ” As a father pities his children, So the Lord pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.” Psalm 103:13,14. There are going to be times and there may not be a few when we fail, but God pities those who come to Him. God has mercy on us and on our frailties that is why we are able to stand before Him. The path to Truth is strewn with the failures of His saints. The vessels of clay are so fragile that our only hope is to lean fully on Him.

Just before His departure, Christ told His troubled disciples, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you……” John 14:27. The sign of a man who has come to terms with his God is peace. It is a peace that passes understanding because it is not dependant on circumstances. The rest that the soul finds when it comes to Christ is priceless. In the hustle and bustle of daily life the peace is always there. It is there even during moments of trial for there is an assurance in the heart that all things are going to work out well. This peace brings rest to the soul and the words of Christ are fulfilled where He said, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” Matt. 11:28. Life seems to slow down and we are no longer in a hurry to go anywhere.