Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
I live in a house I cannot afford. I live there entirely by the grace of God. When the Lord told me to live in the house, I asked him how I would pay the rent. He told me that he created the world with wisdom. (Jer 10:12) For the past seven years, the wisdom of God has paid my rent in a house in Victoria Island, a highbrow part of Lagos, Nigeria.
I love that house. I call it “the secret place of the most high.” When I go home, I go to a haven of peace. I pray by walking around the house. I must have thanked the Lord over one thousand times for that house. But about a year ago, I discovered to my surprise that the Lord had determined to burn the entire house down. No, it is not a typographical error. I did not mean the devil, I meant the Lord.
Let me describe my predicament in this manner. The boxer had trained for months for the title bout. A lot of the training required him to lie against the ropes and take punches in different parts of his body. In no time at all, he had thoroughly socialised his body into taking severe punishment. By the day of the big fight, he knew that he was ready for any eventuality. But the very first punch that his opponent threw took him by surprise. The man must have planted a mole in his camp. Or maybe one of his sparring partners had given his adversary a dossier on his training. His opponent hit him in a part of his body that he had never been hit before. With that very first punch, he was down on the canvas for a count. Clearly, this fight was not going to go according to plan.
As a believer, I have tried to prepare my mind for all kinds of affliction. The Psalmist warns:
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all. He guards all his bones; not one of them is broken. (Ps 34:19-20)
But the one about my house burning down came from left flank and took me by surprise. By the fifth attempt to burn down the house, I got the message and went to the Lord. I repented and pleaded with him. I told him that I would no longer rejoice in the house that he rented for me. I would only rejoice in him. “Father, the issue is not the gift but the giver of the gift. In any case, you are not only the giver but also the gift. My joy must remain in you.” From that time onwards, the near misses with fire outbreaks ceased, and I have stopped dwelling on the beauty of my rented house.
I can only tell you about the Jesus that I know. I can only tell you about the Jesus who called me, saved me, and healed me. I can only tell you about Jesus of Nazareth. I want you to know that Jesus of Nazareth is a killjoy. The Lord is determined to kill everything that gives us joy until we have no joy left outside of him.
Nobody spoils a man’s life like Jesus. Jesus is a killer of all worldly joy. God’s attitude to the world is often lost on many. God hates the world system. The world hated Jesus and killed him. Therefore, anyone who is a lover of pleasure, anyone who likes this world, becomes an enemy of God:
Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (Jam 4:4)
Because God is implacably opposed to the world, he has doomed it to destruction. Isaiah notes: “I have heard from the Lord God of hosts, a destruction determined even upon the whole earth.” (Isa 28:22). In the meantime, God has determined to “bring to dishonour the pride of all glory, to bring into contempt all the honourable of the earth.” (Isa 23:9). God allows wickedness to prevail on earth, the better to commend to us the excellencies of the kingdom of heaven.
The whole earth is in the hands of the wicked. God blinds the eyes of the judges and lets them be unfair. If not he, then who? (Job 9:24 TLB).
Moreover, God ensures that the worst kinds of people are often the ones running governments on earth:
This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men. (Dan 4:17 KJV Emphasis added).
If we were to receive anything worldly from the Lord, he might make us wait for it for so long that by the time he grants it, we might no longer have much interest in it. With Jesus, a man stops enjoying life, realising suddenly that what he considers to be life is actually death. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we are made foreigners and strangers here on decrepit earth, having become citizens of a glorious heaven. That is the work of redemption, and it is attendant upon our atonement.
Out of this new reality is fashioned a completely different psychology. The atonement kills everything before it makes alive. This is the psychology that is glaringly absent with the prosperity messengers of the gospel. But it is certainly not the psychology of Paul:
But this I say, brethren, the time is short, so that from now on even those who have wives should be as though they had none, those who weep as though they did not weep, those who rejoice as though they did not rejoice, those who buy as though they did not possess, and those who use this world as not misusing it. For the form of this world is passing away. (1 Cor 7:29-31)
Take a closer look at this insightful scripture. Paul says that those who weep should act as though they did not weep. This is because Christ makes every pain irrelevant and he puts every joy outside of himself in perspective. Therefore, regard every advantage as if you did not have it. Ignore every disadvantage. Jesus is a leveller. He cancelled all debts and he erased all credits. He exalted every valley and made low every mountain and hill.
In the days of Noah, it did not matter what your credentials were. If you were in the ark, you were saved. If you were not in the ark, you were condemned to die in the flood. Now in the New Testament, the only qualification that matters is whether a man is in Christ. Being in Christ is the only item that should now be on your curriculum vitae. All those other qualifications have become irrelevant in the eternal scheme of things. They cannot get you anywhere. Only one thing is needful, to be in Christ.
He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. (1 Jn 5:12)
Therefore, those who have material possessions should act as though they did not have. If you buy a car, it should be as though you did not have one. If you have a television, it should be as though you did not have it. It is not only that the car or the television is soon going to be an old model, but also that the entire world itself is going out of fashion. We who have received a kingdom that shall not pass away need to know this. Therefore, we should not care for things of the world because they will soon be taken away from us.