This is the fourth and final post in our ongoing Church Near Me series. We are asking what does it look like to be the church in Manchester? What will people find when they search “church near me”? What will they see?
This section is all about our hope. If you have ever struggled with losing heart, this is especially for you.
When our world wastes away, we waste away. It’s like we’re the dog on a lead, a strong lead, and we just can’t shake it off, we’re going wherever that lead is going no matter how hard we might try otherwise. And when things go bad, we do lose heart. We give in, give up, and burn out.
Our hope in Jesus allows us to not lose heart because He calls us to something bigger than ourselves.
Our hearts are being transformed
One reason we don’t lose heart is because our hearts are being transformed. For those in Jesus, you are in a constant passive state of being transformed by Jesus. Our souls, our innermost being, whatever you want to call it, here it’s our hearts: it is undergoing a non stop renovation process by Jesus.
This is a contrast between our physical bodies. Outwardly, we are wasting away. At the very least, all of us, are kinda slowly dying. Our bodies decay over time. I think 25 years old is peak physical condition. After that it’s a bit of a long and slow decline. Some of us might feel that long, slow decline a bit more than others! Seriously, though, there are people in Redeemer who have serious chronic physical issues. That can be very difficult to live with.
But the reality is that inwardly, the real true part of who we are, the most important part of us, that’s what Jesus renews. Outside, there may not be much renewal going on, inside: it is the God of heaven and earth at work in us.
So this is one reason we don’t lose heart while on this journey. We have a hope that our hearts are being transformed from old to new by Jesus. This is passive, we aren’t renewing ourselves, He renews us.
How can this be? When we come to faith, there is a once for all action: we are now adopted as a son or daughter, never to be lost. But that once for all action has continuing results: as an adopted son or daughter, you are treated like one, loved over time, renewed over time. So coming to faith is a once for all action, that has continuing results: one of them is that our hearts are renewed day by day.
Our troubles are being transformed
When bad things happen, or when life is just hard, we don’t lose heart because of the hope that Jesus transforms our troubles.
Troubles, we have them. The radically true statement from the Notorious B.I.G.: “Mo’money mo’ problems. If we’re going to have them, how can we have troubles work for us? Often when a trouble comes in, we feel like we work for it, we try and fix it, we lose sleep over, it’s the boss, we’re the slave. But this verse talks about our troubles in a different way:
Our trouble works for us. The difficulties we go through in this life achieve something that is more significant, that matters more than all of it put together. Your troubles are achieving for you an eternal glory. Our trouble works for us. The dog is in charge of the tail, don’t let the tail wag the dog.
There is a comparison here, just like in the previous verse. Outward v inward. Here it’s light and momentary troubles v eternal glory.
Here’s the thing with troubles in our life, it shrinks everything down. When suffering comes, it’s like blinkers, it’s all we see. We can’t see a few years down the road, we have to deal with this thing! We can see the left and the right, we have to deal with this thing, right? That’s us working for our troubles.
To have your troubles work for you requires you to have a bigger picture. To have a bigger hope.
And if we have any question of light and momentary vs eternal, this eternal glory far outweighs everything you will ever go through. If this was true for Paul and the church at Corinth, surely this is true of us. Our lives are so much easier than the lives of these people, it’s so much easier to have faith than it was for this church at Corinth. We aren’t at the endpoint of suffering. But even if we were, it has nothing on the eternal glory that awaits for us in Jesus.
I know this is hard for every single one of us. Why is this hard? Lack of imagination. Our imagination is too small. We know what it feels like to go through pain here, but we say “eternal glory” and it doesn’t really mean much. We know it should mean a lot, but we don’t feel it. We don’t know it, we don’t get it.
One thing we do get: the burden of glory. The burden of glory is the lack of contentment in everyday life, there’s a glory out there to be experienced that your life just isn’t touching. The burden of glory is not being satisfied, wanting more. This is a good initial desire. We really feel the burden of glory when we go through troubling times.
See, we humans have been made for an immense capacity, an eternal capacity. There is in each one of us a burden of finding that thing, of living to our fullest potential. It’s why we seek our our careers, partners, families, why we buy houses and cars, why we get addicted to drugs and drinking, this burden of glory, of fulfillment, of being completed, of wholeness.
Because it’s eternal, it can only be fulfilled with the eternal. Eternal glory is something now and in the future. Now, it’s being known by God. Known as a son or daughter by the Creator of the world. Loved by God, embraced by Him, God delighting in us. And we experience parts of that now, in the future we will experience it in its fulness, unhindered. Eternal glory is something now and in the future and every little trouble we go through is working for us towards that direction. Towards Him.
That means when those speed bumps come in life, you can tell them: bring it on, you’re working for me you little punk, and you will be helping me receive eternal glory, now and forevermore.
That’s a different way to view our troubles, isn’t it? That’s not my first thought when going through them! And that’s why we need God to be speaking these words into us, through the Bible, through others speaking His Words into us, bringing us back, aligning ourselves with Him.
We live a life of consequence
What do we fix our eyes on? “Fix our eyes” means to “watch closely.” Where we spend our attention. What do we watch closely? Sport? Investments? What do you give your attention to?
What story would the screen time app on your phone tell? What story would your bank account tell? Your diary?
What we give our attention to is what we worship. That’s what worship is.
Now the previous two points have been about developing a rich interior life. That’s a long and difficult process, and because it’s long and difficult, we give up and resort to our version of interior design.
We don’t want to work on our hearts, we want to work on our house. Interior lives are difficult, interior decorating is easier! And use that as a metaphor for your interest of choice: video games, music, beer, work, ministry, etc.
We’d rather have the perfect, bespoke hearth than a healthy and whole heart.
By default we fix our eyes on what’s in front of us. On what is seen. On what is attainable. On what is temporary. And then we end up with these small little lives that either leave us dissatisfied or require us to give up just a little bit.
We come alive when our lives have consequence. When we live for the unseen and the eternal. But here’s the thing: we will never live a life of real consequence while our eyes are locked in the horizontal position. If our hope, what we set our attention on, if that is locked in the horizontal position, we will be let down and miss out. Jesus directs our gaze upward to live out this hope: a focussed life on what matters most.
A big part of not losing heart is being caught up in something bigger than yourself, empowered by Someone bigger than yourself.