Heart Tracks - Coping Or Rising?

"Dear friends, don't be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. Instead, be very glad-because these trials will make you partners with Christ in His suffering, and afterwards you will have the wonderful joy of sharing His glory when it is displayed to all the world." I Peter 4:12-13

Beside this verse, I have written, "Do we just cope with life, or rise above it?" That's a penetrating but fair question for everyone who takes the name of Christ as their Savior. If we have truly, in our hearts and lives, received Him as Lord and Savior, how then do we face life in a fallen, hostile world? One that will surely have more than its share of trouble, difficulty, and yes, suffering, in store for us? How do we deal with all of that? Do we just try to "cope with it," somehow survive it, and make it to heaven? Or, do we live lives that mark us as being, "more than conquerors?" A philosopher once said, "Most men live lives of quiet desperation." I think he was right, if he spoke only of those without Christ. But this can never be the state of those who are in Christ. Yet it seems so many who profess to be His are living lives that could be defined as being in quiet desperation. Why, how, can this be so when so much of His Life is made available to us through the cross and His resurrection?

Watchman Nee, writing on the verse, "You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free," said, "The Greek word for Truth here is best translated as "reality." So many know the Truth intellectually, but it is not their reality. It's never been, and isn't now, their experience. It was said of the Israelites after they were overrun by their enemies, that they were now living as prisoners in their own land. I think this is the condition of so many in the Kingdom right now. The Israelites had entered into the land God had promised them, but now, through unbelief, lived in that land as prisoners, a conquered people. It was never to be so for them, and it is not to be so for us. But is it?

Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life." All who come to Him enter into that life, that promise. The question for each is, have we entered into that life only by intellectual agreement or through heart experience? The first yields a life that copes, tries to survive, and seems always at the mercy of circumstance. The latter brings forth life that overcomes, lives in victory, and can never be held captive by circumstance. It's life that make one more than a conqueror. It's His resurrection life, a rising life. Is it our life?

What mode of life do we live in today? The coping, survival mode, or the rising, resurrection one? Do we just agree with His Truth, or do we live in it?

Blessings,
Pastor O