No Longer Struggling

No Longer Struggling

2/19/22

What happens when we tire of struggling with particular circumstances or situations and just begin to accept the status quo?  All things falling apart is the end result of this quagmire and it only becomes worse after this point.  So why do we tend to give up so easily on such important matters?  Our stamina and willpower are not as strong as they used to be and when we are challenged for a considerable amount of time, we simply quit and try to move on to the next stage of life.  If this tactic was to be managed in this manner it would have been exampled in the Bible, but it is not.  God intends for us to continue fighting in the correct manner and advance His Kingdom for He knows that if we do not or fight incorrectly our enemy shall win.  Therefore, our Christian walk should not faint or quit at any time, but for some reason, we have failed in keeping the correct struggle alive.

It is not hard to see all of the heartaches that have been haphazardly accruing over the past few decades.  It seems like every day that we wake up we are faced with another temporary or permanent crisis that has suddenly and "miraculously" developed during the night.  These conditions are not just limited to one size of the societal level but to all levels to which the gross majority of us must deal, it seems like no one is exempt from such calamity.  Many have wondered if these things shall pass and good times return soon, or as some say "back to normal".  Unfortunately, those days are long gone and shall not return as they were before, we are actually in the beginning stages of a new era one of the uncharted paths and it is our own fault that we are and will be in this position.

God has given us plenty of time to turn our hearts back to Him and to return unto His Ways and LAws, but we have ignored this beckoning and have chosen our paths of selfishness instead.  As I look back upon my youthful days, I can remember many teachers of mine both in public and private schools gently nudging the students to honor God and to keep our distance from the world.  Many kids struggled with such decisions and gave in to the peer pressure that accompanied these decisions and our lives of ours.  This struggle was great and while many of our parents were basking in the popularity of being Christians at the time, Satan used this era to incorporate many of his evil ways in our hearts that we do not consider to be bad at all today.  

Contemporary Christian music was just gaining ground back when I was in junior high and high school, but there was one group that had a good beat and a wonderful message of salvation, repentance, and restoration.  This group stayed popular all the way into the 1990s and was named "Petra".  Some great songs came out of their spirits and each song had its own message to reach all types of kids, one of these songs came out in 1990 and was entitled "Prayer".  One of the lines of the lyrics summed up what my young generation was going through back then and it formed the basis of what these new generations are NOT doing.  The lyrics are as such: 

"Let me be the evidence of what Your grace can do

To a generation struggling to find themselves in You"

This message to us at the time was one of having hope in God, trusting in God, and wanting and needing God in our lives with God being first in all areas of our hearts.  This message was perfectly stated for this was a time when Christianity was popular and many young people and old alike were turning to God for help.  However, the struggle with the world and all of its tricks and hurts still presented itself to us each day and many did not adequately understand what was occurring or how to combat it correctly.  After a short while, the excitement of being a Christian fell away and people began to slowly but methodically become cold to God and warm toward the world.  The adventure of Christianity slowed and the long-term life of an existence settled in.  This continual and steady inclusion of the world has increased the world's strength in our lives exponentially, so much so, that the world can claim coup over the Church, any other institution that goes against it, and that includes personal levels as well.

Once again, young people began to doubt God's Way and entered into the new excitement of the world.  Also, there was a great rebellion occurring as well between the kids and parents.  Yes, all ears of humanity, especially western humanity, go through such a phase but this commitment to the rebellion was deeper for a good majority of us had church experience and it was this participation that Satan could not have; so the fight was being waged in a manner that many did not understand which caused a huge falling away and tepid hearts to living for Jesus.  This form of worldly inclusion continued exponentially and its strength and power over people grew at the same pace and had the accompanying size to go with this growth.  Today, this setting within our hearts is different, for we no longer struggle with the powers to be we would rather appease them and have fun all the while keeping God at a distance.  This is where our Scripture verse comes into our article and is as follows:

Romans 12:2

"And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."

This verse for this article speaks volumes of how we should daily treat the world; however, we have ignored its call and thus allowed this worldly influence to invade the spirit of the Church.  How have we done this, you ask?  How many look at this verse and automatically bypass the statute of the Church as the subject and begin our course of accusations on the world?  If this verse would have been viewed correctly and followed as it was meant to be the entire world's settings and attitude would be completely different.  We have missed the fact that the epistles of the New Testament were written to the Church because of the attitudes and beliefs (of the world) that they had accumulated over the few short years of their existence.  This verse says that the Church in Rome was having compliance issues and these issues were big enough that the Church was beginning to fall apart, from the inside outward, meaning that their activities and beliefs were making them weaker spiritually and worldly stronger.

What we do not understand is that when Christianity was popular and the Church growing we missed the fact that we should have been studying how the struggles were to be fought; we did, but even then we did not take those words seriously enough.  However, Satan did and he has built himself quite a corps of trained engineers that were convinced to dull those messages and words of the epistles in order to go from struggling to no longer struggling for control of our hearts and minds.  Therefore, we can correctly ascertain that the books of the New Testament were not only written for the churches in Paul's day but for our churches, today for the same scenario of the world's advantage is shining brightly as ever.

When you look at this subject in terms of the spirit realm, what the world no longer has to struggle with is the result of direct descendants of unhelped and unhealed conditions of our past.  The Church has fought so much with itself that we no longer have time to fight the good fight, the one that we are supposed to be fighting.  In all spiritual honesty, we have been abusing ourselves over matters we should even care about because in no way should we offer our energies up to the world, our energies should be used fighting the spiritual world and all of its eternal injustices.  We no longer struggle with what is right and through this example, the ones who need Jesus shall never turn to Him because of the non-willingness for us to fight against what they are struggling with.  Their identity in the world stays just as it is because we cannot get out of our wet paper sack.

The Church is now passive in spirit and no longer stands out front for the sinner.  The world sees such activity and acts accordingly in its response.  Question for you: in which instance would you take if you are in need and looking for help?  An institution that stands there but ignores your visible pain or one that talks to you and says that it cares when it really does not.  That is an easy question to answer and it is exactly what we no longer present to the dying world an eternal institution that struggles for its identity and to allow it to shine in a dead world.  In this weak condition of ours, we no longer have the spiritual strength or energy to stand up for God and His Word and through this condition, we no longer see the need for our mission to be completed because all we can focus upon is our inner self-preservation; therefore, we cannot and do not provide any type of example of spiritual leadership to those who are in need of the spiritual guidance necessary to keep struggling for God.

Church through this action of ours, we have advanced ourselves beyond the lyrics of the great song that we spoke about at the beginning of this article.  We have gone past this state of existence so how do you think the people who want to find truth in their lives and earnestly seek such truth will be able to struggle or even overcome such struggle with the enemy?  We have fallen for the greatest lie that we can believe, making the adjustment to end our own struggle with our identity in Christ coming to the conclusion that no struggle is necessary because our acceptance with the world is a better solution.  How can we come up with such a solution as this?  Not only are we discontinuing the mission that Christ has given to us to complete, but we have allowed Satan to rob us enough that we no longer have any connection or trust from those who need Christ.

Unfortunately, the world is about to take an abrupt turn and all things shall change drastically and dramatically.  Also, the coldness and indifference that we now harbor within our hearts shall be exposed as well.  The ones who have been assigned to teach those unbelievers why the world is not the place to dwell shall be exposed even more than what the world will, we expect exposure from the world but not from the eternal messengers from God.  What the world has been allowed to do to countless numbers of people is called abuse and the Church has fallen into such a category as well.  Our struggle with the world has ended but we need to get that back again.  I do not know when things shall change and all of the junk, garbage, and filth shall be exposed but it is going to be in the very near future.

We need to change our example Church, we need to pick back up the struggle with the world and once again give the ones who need Christ in their lives a true example that the world does not own you.  This lack of struggling continues because of our silence and ignorance of the obvious through independent identifications and flat-out lies.  Our divisions have caused great harm to our mission and it is time we pick up the Word again and teach the truth about God, Satan, and eternity.  We need to be active in the lives of those who want Christ in their lives, that is what we are supposed to do and we cannot accomplish this unless we go back to battle.  Because of our laziness, the world has gained a stronger foothold on people and this means we need to dive deeper into the Word of God for direction to proclaim the security of God.

DLB