Part I: How Saved Are You?
Hardship is something that many people run from in their lives. I am not one who seeks out hardship, but it is something that while living on this side of the second coming of Christ we are going to encounter. It is not the absence of hardship and conflict, which is the issue, but how we deal with the challenges of this age that makes the difference. How does this paragraph have anything to do with my title?
I hope to help you answer the question “How Saved Are You?” for yourself through this series of post so that you understand how conflict, tribulation and difficulty are part of our salvation. Jesus did not come to save us from our problems, but He has promised to be with us in and through them. I have heard the gospel presented as some kind of panacea to all of people’s problems. Accept Jesus into your heart and everything will be okay. People take the pill and soon realize that the solution may be worse than the problem. The reality is that when we accept Christ the real conflict has just begun! We step into an unseen battle that has been going on all the time, we are just awakened to the spiritual conflict when Christ enters our hearts.
Jesus never presented such a gospel and the apostles preached something intrinsically different than the just ‘take the Jesus pill’ westernized approach. Jesus used such words as a house or a kingdom divided against itself in reference to our present predicament and experience in His kingdom. As a matter of fact the very words He spoke to Peter concerning the foundation of what it means to be the ecclesia (church) is in the context of conflict. In Matthew 16 Jesus refers to the power He has given to His followers to ultimately be victorious over the powers of darkness, but nonetheless the church is built in the context of hardship and conflict. We could say that the absence of conflict is a sign we are no longer moving forward, but rather are simply drifting with stream of the unredeemed.
In one of the greatest expansions of the early church, its premier leader left us with a mouth full of wisdom. In the churches that he had just planted, Paul told the new disciples, “that through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Can you imagine? You have just received eternal life, and the encouraging words that you get are that you should look forward to and embrace tribulation. If salvation is only an event then once you accept Christ it is over, however if it is a process then accepting Christ is just the beginning of a life where we must learn to not run from, but embrace tribulation.
The word tribulation actually means pressure in the Greek and Jesus along with His apostles taught us we are not to seek to escape from pressure, but embrace it. Salvation is actually a process of learning to allow Christ to work in you His character as you walk through this unredeemed, curse-ridden creation. It is learning to abide within the new creation, groaning within us, as we still struggle within an old creation (Read Romans 8). The kingdom of God is here now, established in the heart of the kingdom of darkness and we have been thrust into this conflict the day we accepted Christ into our hearts. You can’t escape the tension, but you can learn to cooperate with the process of salvation. I hope to help you learn how to more easily do this over the coming weeks.
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