Chapter 4 :
Contentment
Fear of loneliness and suffering
Part Seven
The cross – dying daily
Once we gave our lives to Christ, who is the only person worth giving our lives to, our lives are no longer our own.
Rom 13:7-9 says “For we are not our own masters when we live or when we die. While we live, we live to please the Lord. And when we die, we go to be with the Lord. So in life and in death, we belong to the Lord.”
We gave our lives away when we became Christians – and now our lives are for the Lord. We live now to please the Lord, not ourselves. This is hard to accept, but it’s the Gospel. Its good news, actually, because as we’ve seen in the previous chapters we might lose our life – but we gain Christ! And so we actually gain our REAL lives – life and life to the full!
“What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” (Matt 16:26, NIV.)
It is of no worth whatsoever to lose our soul for the sake of trying to gain contentment, peace and happiness through marriage. Daily we must lay down our own agenda’s and embrace God’s plan. This was something we can do by the power of Christ because of the cross. Our sins are crucified on the cross with Christ. Our selfish ambitions are nailed to the cross with Christ. We die to them, they were crucified. Now, we live by His Spirit and do what pleases Him.
The cross and fear
It is because of the cross that we are able to now Hope in God because He has proved His love for us. We know now He is good. Therefore, we can fear Him and hope in Him at the same time (like I spoke about at the beginning of this chapter).
We’re quickly going back to fear for this reason : fear is what causes us to be depressed. If we fear being lonely, as I said, we will always feel lonely. This constant fear and anxiety places us in a hopeless state, because loneliness cannot give us hope. This hopelessness causes us to question whether it is worth living at all. It causes us to question our own worth, because no one loves us so we feel we must not be worth anything.
Fear of loneliness causes us to miss out on God’s perfect unconditional love. Because of this, we don’t feel loved and have now also missed out on God’s joy. We are hopeless, and finally we find ourselves in a depressive state. Self-worth, and a reason to live are gone. We don’t have a reason to live because we are not passionate about God’s glory – in fact, we’re not passionate about anything at all. Or, we might be, except the only thing we are passionate about is protecting ourselves from any more hurt. Nothing else seems worth it, because everything requires a part of us we don’t want to give away.
What I mean by this is we cannot love anymore – we cannot give, because we want our need fulfilled first. We are not loved, so we do not love. So, we turn selfish. Everything in our lives becomes about us – will this make me feel better? Is this person good for ME? What do I get out of this? I need love, etc.
It is because we don’t trust God that we fear. But instead, the cross has opened up the door for us to place our trust in God. But this requires a giving-away of our life. This is too hard for us to accept – because we want to hold onto our lives desperately in order to preserve ourselves.
Living for ourselves is a self-preservation technique that does not work. Depression is the result of us living selfishly in an attempt to fulfill our own needs to overcome our fear. The reason why it is the result is because we can’t fulfill our own needs, and we can’t overcome our fear unless we fear God. So, we find ourselves hopeless and the cycle continues.
