The struggle is real

Image credit: www.hercampus.com

Pogback. Utd have finally landed their man, or re-landed as some would rightly argue, given the French midfielder is returning to the very same club that sold him in the first place. His transfer fee is off course, ridiculously high, an indication that the beautiful game has become ugly when it comes to money; not that United will care one bit.

A few weeks prior to his signature, United made it plainly evident why they needed to make his signing priority numero uno. For all the talk of Mourinho, coming with new signings, tactics, what have you; it was old problems that resurfaced against Borussia Dortmund in pre-season. United were run rugged by a sharper, quicker Dortmund side that laid bare their shortcomings in the middle of the park,  and were deservingly handed a 4-1 pasting. It was a chastening experience for Mourinho's charges, which served to highlight that they were far from the finished article, in spite of Jose's arrival.

Far from the finished article, is a term a lot of sons and daughters of God can relate with. They are a work in progress whom Jesus will complete as per his timing. He doesn't complete it in an instant. Upon receiving Jesus Christ as savior, one's struggles with sin do not automatically do a disappearing act.

Indeed God gives us a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26), with a desire not to sin but to walk in God's ways. He also gives us a helper, the Holy Spirit, who also emboldens us not to sin(John 15:26). However, sin's presence still hovers around us, stalking us, crouching at our door like the way it did Cain, waiting for the  slightest drop of our guard, to devour us at the opportune moment and boy oh boy, do we drop our guard.

We often fall short of his glory or holiness. Too many times to even count.This means that, as much as our noble goal, is to become like Christ, we still have our flaws that our loving savior has to chip away till he crafts the final masterpiece of his image. That we are still flawed or struggling with certain sins does not make Jesus a quack of a doctor neither does it make our salvation a sham. Rather, it just serves to illustrate the gradual process that is salvation, as opposed to the one-off event many see it as.

Our healing, molding into God's character from our diseased sinful self requires time, patience and effort it isn't a one-time thing that happens overnight.

Therefore, the struggle against sin is real. One that will be your faithful bae till death. The cast may change in that your struggles will be vary over the years but it will be the same script of struggling to overcome sin till the grave. Therefore, keeping it under wraps for fear of being labelled a back-sliding Christian is in my view, out of place. It only eats you up inside and stifles you from experiencing the true freedom that God has given you with Christ.  God's grace and mercy was not just to forgive us and to reconcile us with God. God's grace was for those moments, and they will be many of them; when we slip back to sinful habits and need his grace to remind us and reaffirm us of our identity in him in spite of the slip. Our identity is that we are sons and daughters of God, co-heirs with Christ, sin doesn't change that one-bit.

Someone who has believed and accepted that Jesus died for his/her sin and has saved him from eternal death is a child of God. He is a son/daughter even if he struggles with substance abuse be it alcohol, cocaine, weed. He is a son even if he struggles with porn, sex addiction, masturbation, same-sex sins. She is a daughter even if she struggles with leaving the club life. She is a daughter even if she is struggling to let go of her sponsor.

Sin's constant influence or our sinful tendencies mean as children we are susceptible to get sick, that's why we need constant grace not  the 'one-time, we got this' grace. As has been said, the Church, the body of Christ(not the building) is not a club for saints, it is a HOSPITAL for SINNERS and guess what, everyone is sick.

 It is a hospital, because we are sick, and if we claim that we are not, that we are without sin, then we are lying and living in denial. (1 John 1:8) Church is a hospital, where we acknowledge we are sick and seek God to heal us through his word, through fellowship with other believers who encourage or rebuke us when they have to and  through prayer by candidly telling him about our iniquities.

There is no shame in going to hospital because you are sick, that's what sick people do. Duh!!! "I'm sick, I can't let them see, what will they think of me?!!." Seriously. Seriously.That's as counter-productive as it gets. Hiding your infirmities won't make them go away only seeking treatment will. You're sick, go to the hospital to get well and the first starting point is to admit you are sick.

 It maybe customary to hide one's struggles but it shouldn't be. Confess it. Confess your struggle or sin to an accountability partner, someone whom you trust. Confess it to an accountability group or a small group or a bible study. Will it make you any less of a child of God? No it wont. I'll tell you what it will do, it will make the guilt, the burden, the shame  go away. It will clear your conscience, give you peace of mind. enable you to experience closer fellowship with God and give you the confidence to approach his throne of grace. The heavy load on your shoulders will be no more and with that give you the chance to start over again rather than live your life of faith with a perennial noose hanging over your neck.

Life with Christ is confessing and repenting, not struggling and hiding.  Confess and Repent, is the broken record whose cover you can do even Jimmy Gait, because of your sinful inclinations that will get the better of you once in a while.

Sin is a part of who you are but  isn't it refreshing that God still loves you and me at our worst. That iniquity/struggle we have is not news to him, Our sin doesn't cause him to reel from his lofty throne and fall backwards in total shock over our shortcomings . Our loving father is well aware of our shortcomings and longs to help us overcome them if we let him, if we confess them to him in prayer and confess them in private to a fellow christian or even confess them in public.

I know it's human nature to resist disclosing one's flaws because we want to present the best/ most beautiful picture of ourselves. Ladies go all out on foundation, concealer to hide those flaws to feel beautiful. Funny how God makes us beautiful not by hiding but by revealing our flaws. Zacchaeus knew it, the Samaritan lady and Paul knew it, When we show our flaws we reveal our broken human nature but in doing so allow God to reveal his abundant grace which embellishes us by showing the world that we are not defined by our flaws but defined by our relationship with him.

Our identity in Christ plus those flaws shows the full extent of God's grace to a world who struggle to understand this divine grace of God. They get it, when they see the imperfect in us and God still loving us and are emboldened to pursue Christ, because believe it or not, who wouldn't want to be loved and accepted and affirmed in spite of the skeletons in their closet.

Therefore, child of God don't living in silent suffering, speak it out, lay it bare. God knows your struggle, It was not for the well, he came for, but the sick, there is no shame in confessing you are, neither is it sinful to struggle. The struggle is very real, and Jesus, his spirit, will in no way distance himself from you because of revealing it but will stand by your side, till that day of glorification when the struggle will be no more.

It's not as hopeless as it looks

Photo credit: www.mises.org.br

Unless you've been living under a rock, it is inconceivable that sporting events in Brazil have passed you by unnoticed. Whether it's Bolt bolting to victory in the 100m, Phelps adding to his record medal tally, Rudisha proving that he is King David in the 800m and Jemima Sumgong finally claiming a a medal for Kenya in the Ladies marathon, Rio has been at the center of it all.

The Olympics or sports as we know it, in my view, give us a well-needed break from the circus of the political scene, harrowing tales of domestic violence, school fires left, right and center and the endless drama that grips our country. As a people, we have naturally and assiduously grown cynical, resigning ourselves to the conclusion, that ours is a corruption-rampant country whose leaders will never do anything to break us free from the cycle of theft ; if anything, they will only propagate it further.

The Olympics paints a rather different picture from the one we have been accustomed to as Kenyans. This global showpiece of sports reminds us how life ought to be. It brings into sharp focus merit-based achievement, exemplifying that hard work in the gym or on the field training, actually translates to success not the buy/cheat your way to success model that has been accepted as the norm today. It also showcases the aspect of chance, as time and time again, athletes who aren't even given a prayer in the heats end up amongst those on the podium receiving a medal.

King Solomon, makes a very wise observation in Ecclesiastes 9:11 when he says, " I have seen something else under the sun. The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all."

Solomon's observation is not the preserve of the Olympics, it is of life. A thought that often escapes me when I read this verse; time and chance happen alright but I forget that there is one who is master over time and chance, that is God.

Jesus is often referred to as LORD of LORDS, not just a title that you use in prayer to sound religious but because he actually is the LORD of LORDS.  Colossians 1, speaks in detail of his sovereignty, verses 15 to 19 read," He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church, he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him."

John's description of Jesus in Revelations 1, only serves to illustrate the supremacy of Jesus even more. A similarity in Revelations and Colossians is that Jesus is the beginning, the first or the firstborn. In John 1, this is again highlighted, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Notice that in the beginning, God was already there!!! Jesus was there, before time even began, so how then can he be limited by time when he is the creator of time? I believe time and chance is subject to him.

That gives me the world of encouragement as a child of God. I have experienced God to be gracious and he has given me way more than I deserve. In Economics, ceteris paribus is a term denoting all factors remaining constant, isn't it stupefying that all things are never constant, and that we are loved by the very one who can either ensure all factors are constant, or at the very least, one or two factors change.

It's quite common seeing people doing life with a sense of non-entitlement, with a perennial frustration that it's all hopeless. You can assume a defeatist mentality; ruling yourself out before the competition even begins, an inclination to shrug your shoulders with indifference, wave the white flag and capitulate without as much as an effort.

The gracious LORD Jesus, who is LORD over time and chance, time and time again, tilted the scales and altered chance for his will to be done. Were it not so, David , the last born shepherd would not have become king. Moses, the kid who was placed in the river would not have been 'found' by Pharaoh's daughter. The Moabite lady, Ruth, would not have found Boaz, single and searching and would instead, be just one of the many thinking, "All the good ones are taken."

The Ninevites would not have been forgiven and saved, nor Rahab the prostitute, nor Zachaeus the reviled tax collector. The LORD of time and chance just happens to be the LORD of grace, the LORD of love, who forgives and gives us a hatful of second chances we scarcely deserve so long as it falls in line with his plan to reflect his glory.

No chance of nailing that job, no chance of moving out, no chance of hooking up to that guy or lady you dream of daily, the LORD of time and chance may have something different to say about that.

The Olympic games has shown that things don't always go to script, so has God. The script was that sin had condemned us to death but Jesus changed that script. He died in our place as an atonement for our sins, then resurrected  so as to reconcile us to God and save us from eternal damnation, to take away our shame and our guilt. Before that and thereafter, the LORD of time and chance has been changing the script at will, for his will to those keen on doing his will.  Therefore, run the race, knowing you don't always have to be swift to win it or have all the aces in your pack to win, time and chance can happen to you because you serve Jesus, who is LORD over time and chance, able to tilt the odds in your favor if he means to.