Choosing what we want most over what we want now
Nearly six thousand students recently gathered for a mass worship event at Mississippi State University this month. In September 2023, five thousand students attended a mass worship service at Auburn University’s Neville Arena, and two hundred were spontaneously baptized. The event sparked a movement called “Unite US.” Over two thousand salvations and more than eight hundred baptisms have taken place at its events on American campuses over the last year.
We should rejoice at such good news at a time when pro-Palestinian protests and “woke” ideology continue to embroil many schools.
“We have such a need for love”
Charles Dickens famously wrote, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” He could have been reading today’s news:
- Yahya Sinwar’s death was “a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world,” but Hezbollah and Iran vowed to escalate their war against Israel.
- Migrant crossings have plunged at the US–Mexico border, but the border crisis has led to an explosion in forced prostitution of immigrants in the US.
- The Economist calls America’s economy “bigger and better than ever,” but an aging population, the rise of artificial intelligence, and the “rewiring of the global economy” threaten our future.
The juxtaposition of good news and bad, of pleasure and pain, illustrates C. S. Lewis’s observation: “Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”
Here’s our cultural dilemma: since secularized people see these “inns” as, in the words of George Clooney, “the only thing I know to exist,” they “mistake them for home.” According to Henri Nouwen, this fallacy is “the source of much of the suffering in our contemporary society”:
We have such a need for love that we often expect from our fellow human beings something that only God can give, and then we quickly end up being angry, resentful, lustful, and sometimes even violent. As soon as the first commandment is no longer truly the first, our society moves to the edge of self-destruction.
The way off this “edge” is both countercultural and deeply transformative.
“Walk by faith, not by sight”
God uses suffering to show us that this world is neither our home nor a reliable source of happiness. He does this because, as C. S. Lewis noted in The Problem of Pain, “God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in him.” He therefore must remove false sources of happiness so we will turn to the only one that is true.
I have experienced this principle personally. So long as I can trust in any source of happiness but God, I tend to do so. This is because I want to be my own god (Genesis 3:5), to exercise my “will to power” to attain the happiness I long to experience. I don’t want to give up control of my life to a God whose idea of happiness may be different than mine. Nor do I want to pay a price for happiness that seems greater than the reward it brings.
But this is only because I so often forget who I am and who God is. I forget that my mind is finite while his is omniscient and that my desires are sinful while his are holy. I forget that the God who “is” love (1 John 4:8) loves me more than I can love myself and that he can only want what is my absolute best. And I forget that the cost of trusting and serving him is always less than the benefit to me and to his kingdom.
In such times, I must choose what I want most—to love and please my Father—over what I want now. I must choose to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).
“Rebels who must lay down our arms”
Such obedience is not only vital to our happiness—it is also the only path to knowing God fully and making him known to the world. One of my mentors encouraged me to “stay faithful to the last word you heard from God and open to the next.” Scripture illustrates the wisdom of his words:
- Abraham followed God’s call “not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8), and God used him to establish the Jewish nation.
- The disciples obeyed Jesus’ command to “stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49), and they soon experienced the Pentecost miracle that sparked the Church and changed the world (Acts 2).
- Paul followed God’s “Macedonian call” (Acts 16:6–10) and brought the gospel to the Western world.
- John was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day” (Revelation 1:10), and he met the risen Christ and received the book of Revelation.
If you and I want to experience the abundant life of Christ in this world (John 10:10) and the praise and reward of God in the next (Matthew 25:23), if we would know Christ and make him known in ways that transform our souls and our society, we must agree with Lewis:
“We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved; we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms.”
The more holistic our submission to our Lord, the more we become like our holy Lord (Romans 8:29) as he continues his earthly ministry through us. Then, no matter the challenges we face, we discover that “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (v. 37).
“The work for which I am best fitted”
Let’s close with an example.
Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky (1831–1906) was born in Lithuania. He went to Germany for rabbinic studies, where he became a Christian. He then emigrated to America, trained for the priesthood, and in 1859 was sent by the Episcopal Church to China. He spent 1862 to 1875 translating the Bible into Mandarin. Two years later, he began translating the Scriptures into Wenli (the classical Chinese style of writing).
He developed Parkinson’s disease, became largely paralyzed, and spent the rest of his life completing his Wenli Bible, the last two thousand pages of which he typed with the one finger that he could still move. Four years before his death he said, “I have sat in this chair for over twenty years. It seemed very hard at first. But God knew best. He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted.”
Will you do the work for which you are “best fitted” today?
Monday news to know:
*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.
Quote for the day:
“Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
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