Stop Fighting and Start Fighting

I saw that I wrote most of this over this past Christmas vacation. With some edits and the last few paragraphs added more recently, here it is:

"Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30 ESV)

Everything we do is for our own happiness, pleasure, and joy. There is no motivation that affects us greater than the motivation for the maximizing of our own comfort and happiness. Think about where you are sitting right now. I'm in my bed. I am sitting here because it is one of the quietest places and most comfortable seats in the house, and my room affords me the ability to spend time reflecting and gaining a clarity of thought that is no other place can. Why do I value all these things to thereby choose my bed as my writing spot? In the end, I aim to have more peace, more lucidity in my own thinking, and really, I hope to mitigate my discomfort as much as I can.

This same principle applies to every area of life. The pursuit of my own joy, happiness, and fulfillment realizes itself in the most mundane tasks of daily living: eating, sleeping, playing music, doing dishes, even blogging. These are all avenues through which every living person pursues his or her own sense of meaning and fulfillment, even at the minuscule level.

This is a fact of life.

But here's the problem:

We fight for fulfillment, meaning, and joy in all the wrong places.

I'm not saying that there's a problem with doing mundane things throughout the day to make us feel better. I am firmly convinced that my sense of fulfillment as I clean the toilet in my house is a well-justified one. What I'm saying is that our pursuit of learning, our pursuit of skills and abilities, and especially our pursuit of different inter-personal relationships are all ways in which we chase our hunger for fulfillment. I drove home today after spending some time with friends, and I came across a song that referenced the verse with which I introduced this post. I started to choking up as I realized how much harder my life is than it has to be. Jesus said that His yoke is easy and his burden is light. What a contrast to the burden that I feel right now. Life as a believer shouldn't be so, for lack of a better word, burdensome. It's a really crummy feeling when we try so hard to be happy and fulfilled through so many things and end grasping at the wind and punching the air. I'm becoming increasingly aware that the solution is to stop trying so hard to be so happy. It never works. This kind of fight for our own joy is miserable and it is a battle that we will lose 100 percent of the time.

While we need to stop striving for peace outside of the rest that Jesus brings, we need to strive for the peace inside of the rest that Jesus brings. Paul says in Philippians 1:27:

"Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel"

Striving for faith does not mean forcing yourself to pray harder, read the Word more, and talk about theology more profoundly. It means that we strive for faith in the Gospel by preaching it to ourselves again and again. We must look to more accurately see our sin in light of our salvation and praise God for His salvation. You might say, "But David, I'm saved. I already believe the Gospel." To which I would respond that if we really believed all of the Gospel all of the time, we would never sin, because belief in the Gospel affirms that Jesus, the only perfectly beautiful being in existence, died to ransom His people from the eternal destruction that we all deserve. In the end, Gospel-belief should affirm that Jesus is better every single time. If we believe that this is true, we should never look to anything else to give us the rest that our spirits need.

Paul also gives us this command in Philippians 2:12-13:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

This may seem like we do need to fight for our own peace. Not only does it seem like we need to fight for our own peace, but it seems like we should do so out of fear. The problem with this reading of that passage is that it is the conclusion of one of the most glorious explanations of the Gospel in verses 1-11! Paul expounds on how humble Jesus was to lower himself to our level and die at the hands of his own creation so that we might be saved! Paul then concludes that because those things are true and because it is God Himself who is actually working, we should respond! We should not respond out of mere obligation, but we should respond because of the great love with which he loved us!

This whole subject of "working out our own salvation" can be tricky and confusing. While I by no means understand all the ins and outs of it, what I will say is that the times I have been in love with Jesus the most is when I ask God to show me my own sick and depraved heart and then minister the good news of the Gospel to me, yet again.

Rest in God's love. He LOVES you. He loves you more than you love the thing you love the most. He loves you more than you love you. Rest in that, and seek His face all the more often, asking that He will enable you to have faith in the Gospel more deeply and fully.

God is our hope.

.DSN.