Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the changing of our lives we call COVID. It had been around for a while, but this was the first Sunday the church was asked to suspend public meetings. Our Church Board met that morning to discuss what this meant. By phone, we invited in the leader of our nursing ministry for his advice. It was agreed that we would postpone service for two weeks and then evaluate. We started working from home and things have never returned to normal.
For many of you, life changed in other ways. Your children no longer went to school. You couldn’t visit family and friends as you once did. Your jobs may have changed or gone away. It has been a difficult journey.
As a result of these life changes, I have been asked many questions. One is, “Is this a major attack by Satan on the Church?” “Will the Church survive if we can’t meet normally?” “When will things get back to the way they were?”
Added to this stress has been some unsettling times in our nation. Political battles have raged out of control. We’ve seen riots that have actually breached the halls of Congress. There is financial uncertainty as our national debt soars. “Will our nation survive this assault?” “Are we at the brink of losing our freedoms?” These are all valid questions and I have tried to answer them from a position of love and an understanding of Scripture.
However, as men pursuing godliness, I must wonder if we are asking the right questions. All of these come from the perspective of loss and potential defeat. What if we changed our focus and began looking at our circumstances as opportunities? We could ask questions like, “Is God allowing the struggles to draw his people into a deeper level of faith?” “Can I capitalize on the desperation of people to show them the peace available through Jesus?” “If God is allowing less time at Church, how can I use that time to encourage and challenge people who may never come to Church?”
The first set of questions is focused on what I may lose. The second set of questions is focused on what God’s Kingdom could gain. Which do you believe is more profitable for eternity? To change the questions we are asking, we need to change our focus. This is accomplished when we move from the uncertainty of our changing circumstances to the unchanging character of God.
God’s grace and mercy are the antidote for uncertainty and fear. Without God’s grace and mercy in my life, the outlook for my future is an eternity separated from God in loneliness and suffering. When God chose to provide our Redeemer, he took away those consequences and replaced them with the assurance of a place he has prepared for us in his presence forever. The only requirement on our part is to change our focus from our own issues and place our complete faith in the work of Jesus on the Cross and the promises that come with it.
This allows us to replace our grumbling with gratitude. Gratitude then leads to opportunities to praise and worship our Lord. If there was anyone with the right to grumble at his circumstances, it was Jesus. In his perfection and holiness, he left the glories of heaven to live with all the pain and sorrow we experience. This culminated in the ultimate suffering he paid to bring us the freedom to have a relationship with the Father. But his response was not grumbling. Instead, Philippians 2:6-8 reveals that, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!”