Christian Living

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Living where we shouldn't

There is a place that you and I do not belong! We have tried to get comfy dwelling there but despite our best efforts we still feel that foreboding sense of despair and defeat. We just weren’t made to live in the tension between two opposites. Now, have I got your attention?

He sat in prison. His crime was heralding the good news that Jesus Christ is the Son of God raised from the dead and demanding that all men repent. He was guilty as charged and in time he would pay the price. So Paul took out his quill and parchment and wrote the following to a band of believers in Philippi.

Phi 3:7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.

I have known these verses for many years but recently I discovered something of immense value. There is absolutely no indication of any tension in this man’s heart between the heavenly and the earthy. It is totally absent. That struck me like a hammer.

Most Christians I know live in a titanic tension between the eternal blessings of the heavenly and the temporary, cheap and superficial attractions of the earthy. They have one hand on the promises of God and the other with a death grip on the things of this world. They don’t want to let go of His word but at the same time they struggle with all their might to hold on to all their “things.” The situation is so prevalent in the modern church that we have cleverly devised doctrines to justify it. If you don’t believe me let a hurricane come and blow everything you cherish all over the county and see how you react. We live like our lives consist of the abundance of things we possess. The fact is, our lives are too deeply embedded in the temporal and so we live in this tension, in “No Man’s Land!”

Paul had it all, respect, honor, possessions, education, a good retirement fund, and a bright future for this upcoming young Pharisee. But now the aged saint reveals his address. He has left the struggle between heaven and earth. The things that were important to him now were considered as excrement. Something had caught his heart and for him no earthly pleasure could ever compare. So he leaves no man’s land and runs hard after God. Yes, he is grateful for the offering sent to him by his friends and rejoices for it but his wealth is not in the bag of money that came. It is in a man. Jesus!

You know, I have never seen a lost man living in this tension. He is so absorbed with the earthy that heaven means nothing to him unless the Holy Spirit begins to prick his heart. But Paul was at the other end of the spectrum. His attachments to this world were severed and like a hot air balloon he rose free of the gravity, the control of the earthy.

We want both. But you can’t have it. We seem to think we can but one will always win over the other. The stark reality is that the kingdom of God divides the heavenly from the earthy. That’s why Jesus told the disciples it was harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

The blessings of God are to be received with gratitude and good stewardship. Let’s enjoy them and put them to good use. But we must remember that the blessing above all is not a new car or home, it is Jesus Himself. When we grasp the significance of this fact that He really is our inheritance then we shall begin to live in that place where the tension of heaven and earth has no hold. “No man’s land” will loose its attraction and peace will be ours.

May God sever any tether that binds us to the tension of living where we don’t belong.

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