Social Awareness (Phil. 3)

Anyone who has a social media account in today’s world can easily see the frustration with life people often experience. They quickly send out the overwhelming reports of the bad, the attacks of life, the storms that brew—even the ones looming large on the horizon that may never arrive—along with unspoken prayer requests or spoken ones without information, intimating their own understanding of a situation, creating interest and finding fulfillment in the knowledge they have that others lack as of yet. It’s easy to be judgmental and just as easy to join in the chaos. What’s hard is living in light of eternity in a world that can only see past this moment.

This anxious world in which we live expects ease, longs for prosperity, and rejects anything smacking of pain or adversity, rejecting the notion that God would ever allows us to suffer or that He would ever discipline us when we are in need of it. Why are we this way? How did we reach the point of claiming Christianity and all its blessings yet lamenting adversity with no true understanding of God or the part He plays in our lives? We quickly embrace faith and prayer when trouble comes near. However, we just as quickly limit or turn away from the same God we have publicly “trusted” when the answer is neither quick nor easy.

Paul’s writings make it abundantly clear that we should share in the sufferings of the body of Christ, so there is no shame in publicly asking for personal prayer for a situation encountered; yet, Philippians also contains the idea that we are to follow Paul’s example of contentedness and joy without our circumstances consuming us, our focus being on Christ, “who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself” (3:20-21, NASB). Conversely to the outpouring of requests for help from God and intercession, we are just as quick to credit everything and anything but Him when things go well for us, forgetting from whose hand all is dispensed; our focus is on our appetites, and we glory in our shame with our minds “set on earthy things” (3:19). 

If God is worthy to be served (and He is), if He is sovereign (and He is), if He is good and compassionate (and He is), and He is holy (and He is), then we must serve Him in whatever circumstances we encounter, and as Paul says in Philippians 4:11-14, “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am,” knowing how to live when things were hard and he lived in poverty, when he prospered, when he was hungry, when he lacked food, in any and all adversity he encountered. If anyone is like me, this is the hard lesson life teaches—the personal struggle of learning contentment can only be learned when things don’t go exactly as we wish or expect. It is through experience with suffering that we learn this, for I’ve found the easy times don’t produce the character hard times do.

I thought of these things today as I read from Psalms 60 and saw David’s acknowledgement of God’s sovereign hand at work in his own life in hard times. In the Psalm, he laments God’s rejection of His own people and speaks of God’s anger and the result of it on the land and the people, and David begs God for restoration (v. 2). The verse that really spoke to me says, “Thou hast made Thy people experience hardship; Thou hast given us wine to drink that makes us stagger” (v. 3). David acknowledges God’s hand in his trouble (being surrounded by an army of Philistines), which is a notion that today’s prosperity-gospel-laden church cannot see. He sees that God alone can deliver, from the trouble of those around David who seek his destruction, and David says at the end of the Psalm, “O give us help against the adversary, for deliverance by man is in vain. Through God we shall do valiantly, and it is He who will tread down our adversaries” (v. 11-12). 

David didn’t try to slay the Philistine armies surrounding him without God’s leading, for he had already learned the consequences of doing so through trial and error, through his own sin. He learned through the things he suffered, as we all should learn, though the learning process is difficult. David seeks God’s will, follows His commands, defeats his enemies, and rejoices, only to quickly revert to anger at and fear of God (2 Sam. 7:8-9). Then he humbles himself, reclaims the ark, dances in joy, and celebrates God’s victory, bringing the ark into Jerusalem (v. 12-19). Everything was perfect, yes? No! His wife ridiculed him and his walk with God, resulting in ongoing strife within his own household (v. 20-23). The way is NOT easy! We should not expect it to be in this fallen world in which we live for so short a time. This world is not my home (Heb. 13:14), and it is not my hope (Col. 2:27)!

Matthew Henry, in his commentary on Psalm 60 speaks to this idea of the nature of public rejoicing in a time far preceding social media: “In a day of public rejoicing we have need to be taught to direct our joy to God and to terminate it in him, to give none of that praise to the instruments of our deliverance which is due to him only, and to encourage our hopes with our joys.” Wisdom is timeless, like the God who gives it, and there really is nothing new under the sun (Ecc. 1:9). God was, still is, and will always be (Rev. 1:4). The question becomes for us, will we bend the knee now, acknowledging God’s sovereign design for our lives, anchoring our hope in Christ alone, or will we continue to try vainly to thrive in a world that we were not designed for, forgetting what Paul willingly reminded his readers of: that this world is not our home, “our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20)?