Miserable Christianity

By David Hobbs

Some of the saddest people around are young people who have been raised as Christians, yet have never met the Christ they profess. They try to follow the Christian moral code, while secretly longing for the fun their non-Christian friends seem to be having all the time. They’re torn inside, feeling that Christianity and its code of conduct are right, but wondering why whoever designed Christianity couldn’t have designed a little more fun into it! Their prayers don’t seem to get answered all that often, and they hope they don’t have to stand up in class and defend creationism over evolution while their classmates snicker and their teacher scoffs. And Please, please don’t make me explain why God sends people to hell forever just for not believing in Him!

Yes this Christianity can be a miserable business can’t it?

Paul touched on this when he said in 1 Corinthians 15:19—If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

There is no way to win the war of “Christianity vs. the World,” as long as we are locked into the natural realm. In the natural—the physical realm—what the world offers looks pretty attractive compared to Christianity. Strip away eternal life, final judgment, our heavenly home, divine approval, peace within, and Jesus’ atonement for our sins, and what are you left with? What the Bible calls the pleasures of sin for a season. As long as you don’t see outside the "season," it all looks pretty good.

And also as long as you’re in the realm of the human intellect, you will always be at a disadvantage when dealing with the power of worldly temptation. You can have all your intellectual arguments lined up why sex outside of marriage is wrong, but when a seductive face is inches from yours and your hormones are raging, those arguments don’t hold much restraining power!

So what’s the answer?

The answer, my friend, lies not in knowing about Christ, but in meeting Christ. It’s all in the meeting! When Jesus revealed Himself to me on that log pile off in the woods near the fire fighting barracks in Union Creek, Oregon that still, August evening of 1974, it revolutionized my life [P. 286 Out of the Fire, A Life Radically Changed]. I met the God of Power, the God who exists outside of creation and time, the God who not only created all things, but who is also upholding all things by the word of His power [Heb. 1:3].

I found I didn’t have to defend God and why He does what He does; He’s God. He can do whatever He wants. Why is there a hell? Who knows? Why does God send people to hell? I don’t know that either, He didn’t check with me first! But He does. Read the Bible for yourself and see how you interpret it! But that’s not the important thing; the important thing is that He made a way for us to escape and spend eternity with Him in heaven and it’s a free gift. Do you want to know how?

When you truly meet Christ, He comes into you and starts living His life through you. That’s when Christianity becomes the most exciting thing that life offers. What’s more exciting, a drunken binge with raging hangover the next day, or having Jesus heal somebody through you after letting you feel His deep compassion for them? What’s better, having sexual relationships one after another that always promise more then they deliver; or feeling Jesus’ white hot passion for you in a love that will go on throughout eternity?

You will be amazed at how the things of the Lord easily outstrip anything the world can offer, but only to those who meet Him and let Him live through them; only to those who yield their lives to Him and allow His divine life to flow out of them.