Hope

Hidden

Growing up, a favorite game of our family was hide-and-seek. There’s a good chance that my dad actually liked the game better than any of the kids because he took great joy in finding new and innovative places to help the hide-ers evade capture. He would lift kids up on top of the refrigerator, and place the cookie jar into their hands, so that they would just seem like part of the decor. He would take off the top of the papasan chair, place a child into the solid base that was underneath, and then place the chair back on top (always making sure the young one could breathe.) I even think once or twice he put us inside the clothes dryer, although I’m sure many people may be aghast at that suggestion.  His creativity seemed to  know no bounds as he looked for places that we could hide.

As illustrated from the above examples, some of my dad’s most effective strategies for hiding us involved placing us into something else. In order to keep the seek-ers from finding the hide-ers, it was helpful if what they saw was the object rather than our faces. They would look right past us, because they presumed that we couldn’t be there. After all – that was a chair, or a dryer – it wasn’t a hiding kid.

This happens to also be a great illustration of what happens when we become believers. As my pastor often reminds us, the word for baptism, literally means “placed into.”  When we have been “baptized into Christ” – we were placed into Him.  He’s covering us; He’s hiding us. Therefore when people see us, they shouldn’t see the cowering child that’s afraid of the future, they should see Christ. They shouldn’t be looking at our insecurities, our fears, and our hang-ups, they should be seeing the beauty and the majesty of our risen Lord.  We are hidden in Him – so that people look right past “us” – because all they see is Christ. This of course isn’t to imply that we have to feign perfection. After all, that’s an act that we can only keep up for so long. Instead, we need to remember that because we are in Him, we have already been granted all we need to live a godly life (2 Peter 1:3), and we need to get busy letting Him use us to make Himself look good.

In the same vein, it’s important for us to remember that when we are hidden in Christ, we are protected. The old hymn, Rock of Ages starts with these seemingly strange words, “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.”  It’s a reminder that not only should other people see Christ when they look at us, but we can take confidence that when we are hidden in Him, we are protected. It is as if we are surrounded by the greatest and strongest mountain; no weapon can penetrate it, no foes can surmount it. Nothing can happen to us apart from His plan.

He protects us.

He cover us.

He is our shield.

And just as we want people to look at us and see Christ, we can have confidence in this – because we are hidden in Him, when God looks at us, all He sees is His Son as well.

 

 What do you think? How does being hidden in Christ change how you live?

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Growth

Dangerous Christians

We take great strides to prevent danger. We lock our doors, look both ways, and remain aware of our surroundings. Wet think that we will recognize that which threatens our safety and that we can act against it. However, those who make a career out of protection know that it’s the harm that you don’t anticipate that is the most concerning. It’s the threat that you do not see that is often your undoing.

In Christian circles, we too are on the lookout out for that which might do damage to our faith. However, as Jim Elliot reminds us, perhaps it’s the threat that we aren’t even aware of that we need to be most watchful of. As Elliot states:

We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the Twentieth Century does not reckon with. But we are “harmless,” and therefore unharmed. We are spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious objectors in this battle-to-the-death with principalities and powers in high places. Meekness must be had for contact with men, but brass, outspoken boldness is required to take part in the comradeship of the Cross. We are “sideliners”—coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot hate us, we are too much like its own. Oh that God would make us dangerous! (qtd. by Elisabeth Elliot in Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testimony of Jim Elliot.)

In other words, it’s the temptation to be safe that is often the greatest threat. We want to remain neutral – to not cause offense, while forgetting that our salvation rests on the scandal of grace. The Good News is promised to be “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23), yet we try to make our message palatable and end up making it phony. We want to be a part of the crowd, rather than set apart from it.

Yet, this is not what God has called us to. As Elliot rightly reminds us, when we are harmless – when we preach a God that does not call for a radical eradication of our former self in place of a radical commitment to the one true Christ – we are also impotent. We don’t have an impact because we aren’t even participating in the fight.

My dad used to always say that if Satan wasn’t attacking you it meant one of two things. You better “check your six” because he was coming after you, or, he had decided that you weren’t worth the effort. If you weren’t worth the effort, then you weren’t doing much for Christ’s kingdom – which mean you weren’t a very “dangerous” Christian.

As Elliot exclaims “Oh that God would make us dangerous!”

 

Now it’s your turn…How are you “dangerous” for Christ?

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