Life is hard.
It is hard fighting it.
We seem to be fighting life from the negative side or from the bad side of the equation. We believe that if we fight for a bad cause to make it better, life will get better. But fighting from this angle it can wear us down after time. In fact, our crusade could take us our whole life to conquer it. If even then it would be conquered then. This is just coming from a personal conviction, what about everyone else?
This way of fighting the negative could be considered a social fight to rid the world of the all the ‘so-called’ evil in the world. The effort that ‘our’ mission seems to be to rid the ‘evil’ is misguided in that God has vowed that this is ‘His’ job to fill. Man’s ability to make the ‘social ills’ of society, could be a disaster to all involved by the turmoil of what someone deems to be ‘evil’. We may be seeing this now in our world now.
But more importantly, who is to say ‘What is Evil or bad in one’s society’?
The other side of the coin, could be, no, It ‘is’ the way to attack the world. It is the standing up as a follower of Christ and the ‘identity’ that it upholds as the body of Christ. As was in the old testament the identity of God’s people was their identity of their law, and their own God. God’s change to the new covenant was to write the ‘law’ on the hearts of his people.
Our concept of what our ‘identity’ as a Christ follower has got to coincide with what the foreshadow of the old covenant. We must stand as representative of Christ in our world, such as a High Priest would do in Israel.
I saw an illustration of a small group of people singing carols in a circle, holding candle’s, with one being lit. The key to this illustration is the way that it is the right way to do it. You see, When one has the lit candle in a crowd, showing light in a dark place, all others are wanting to be ‘in’ the light. So there instinct is to ‘go’ to the one that has the light and be ‘like’ or just ‘be’ light.
You started with one candle lit(Christ’s light), with darkness all around him. You then are approached by someone from the darkness asking for to be in the ‘light’ with the touching of candles, to produce a brighter light. Those two lights are approached with another candle wanting to be lit as a light for himself, and for others. It is then seen by someone farther away in the darkness, that sees a light for direction, and goes there to have their candle(life) represented as a light in the world.
It is this model of God’s people coming together as one that will become God’s Kingdom.