Wednesday, October 20, 2010

The Quandary of the Rock and Feather

The more I see the way Christ works in my life and the lives of others the more I'm convinced that our perspective walks can be summed up by density. Psalm 144:1 states "Of David. Blessed be the Lord, my Rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle." (ESV). Here David refers to God as a rock, which if grounded, is an unmovable object. In Matthew 16:18 Christ is speaking to Peter when He says "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it." (ESV). Here Christ is not identifying Peter himself as the rock, but rather Peter's confession of Christ as Lord as the rock. John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Here we can see that Christ, the Rock, is the Word of God which Peter is speaking in Matthew 16. Furthermore we can conclude that Peter was always the Rock because in Galatians we see Paul rebuke Peter before the Church. Also in Acts 15 we see that although Peter resides on the Jerusalem council, it is James who has the decisive final word. So if we know that we ourselves are not the truth we can then realize that the Rock is indeed in us when we speak the Word, which is that Christ is Lord!

Now certainly no one would doubt the density of a rock, especially in the first century AD. However the reality is that like any scale, density has two sides. If the rock is representative of something with maximum density, I would argue that the feather would be its opposite. Feathers are thin, light, and even when placed in the ground they continue to sway. The feather represents the flimsy faith we have in our dryness which can be made to go in whatever direction the wind chooses. To back up this theory, I would present some compellingly convenient scripture from Ephesians 2:1-2. "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience." Here Satan is described as being the "the prince of the power of the air" and I don't think its a stretch to say that air has its sway over a feather.

The big thing that has been difficult for me recently is that no matter what I do in life, I am always going to be in service to someone. Honestly that hurts my pride a lot to know that inevitably I am called to serve no matter how I live my life. Even when I don't choose Christ, I am still a slave to Satan and all my sin works towards his goals. But as always there is that hope. We were not made to live in service of ourselves, because we can't! It isn't in our design to be self-sufficient; in fact, self-sufficiency would lead us straight out of existence all together. So if we accept that ultimately we must serve, the question then becomes which side do we choose? On the one hand you have Christ, the living God, who came and died in SERVICE to His people so that they might experience INFINITE and ENDLESS joy. On the other hand you have Satan who is purely selfish and delights in men working towards their own destruction. The great thing about service to Christ's kingdom is that He has served us first. For every non-believer that you lead to Christ, I promise His reward to you is infinitely greater than your works. Choosing Christ isn't a commission into bondage, but a welcoming into the greatest joy known to the universe.

I can't speak for the world, but I have no desire to be like a feather that blows back and forth at the will of sin. Instead I will be founded in the Rock that is the truth of Christ. A Rock that will endure tsunamis and hurricanes for my sake.

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