by Gabriel Williams

This is my first blog of the year and as most people do, I spent a good deal of time for the past month reflecting on my life and my walk with Christ. In the past year, there have been a number of great victories given to me by the grace of God and a number of failures that God is still working on. In many ways, God has demonstrated His faithfulness to me over the past year and His faithfulness has caused me to remain continuously grateful to Him. His kindness towards me has radically changed my life from being an ungrateful Christian who lived on the basis of entitlement to a believer that honors God in all things and trusts in Him, despite life’s difficulties. During this year, many scriptures that I’ve never experienced came alive like never before. There are two passages that come to my mind to describe last year:

The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn that shines brighter and brighter until the full day. Proverbs 4:19

Much of my Christian life in my earlier years were characterized by inconsistency. There were some days where I experienced God’s glory in a very real and definite way, and then there are other days where I would spiral into old sins and old religious habits. This up-and-down relationship with Christ was something that I never questioned in my earlier Christian life because I never saw an example of a person who lived consistently in the face of God. However, last year, this scripture gripped me because its truth is inescapable. According to this passage, the righteous man (the man who lives by faith in Christ) should not have such an unstable life, but his life in Christ should grow greater and greater. The righteous man should not live his life, waiting to revive an old Christian experience, but should live his life, expecting a more glorious day in the future. Each day, his walk with Christ should grow brighter and become much more clearer. At the beginning of last year, my life was still very much up-and-down spiritually. The reality was that I was not secure in my foundation of Christ, and as a result, my Christian life flowed based on how my circumstances were. However, when I understood and grasped this scripture, I pursued God that this scripture may become real to me and by the end of the year, I could say that the Word proved itself to be true in my life. I could finally sing the popular refrain without lying: “Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say, It is well, it is well, with my soul.” My Christian walk was truly growing brighter and brighter each day.

The second passage that came alive to me this past year is from Lamentations:

The Lord’s lovingkindness indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Thy faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion” says my soul, “Therefore I have hope in Him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him. It is good that he waits silently for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he should bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone and be silent since He has laid it on him. Lamentations 3:22-28

The conviction of the passage comes with a question: Is Jeremiah exaggerating or is he describing his personal experience with God? How can a man who saw the devastation of his people declare that His lovingkindness never ceases and His compassion never fails? I was faced with this question in my life last year as I saw my mother, from a distance, go through various difficulties with her illness. I didn’t understand why this was occurring and why I was in a position to do nothing, but this passage is nevertheless true: His faithfulness is great, His lovingkindness never ceases, and His compassions never fail. He changed my heart about the situation when I placed my trust in Him to have His perfect will in her life and I began to see gradual change in her, both spiritually and physically, as the year went on. Although the illness is not gone, the work that God produced in spiritually far outweighed the pain of the physical illness.

The second half of the passage came alive in my life when God placed the burden of building the Church in my heart. Honestly, this was not something that I personally wanted in my life because I knew the difficulties involved in building the Church, but when God told me that this is the purpose of my life, He gave me a great sense of peace about the matter. However, as I began to sit down and meditate on this, I realized that this calling is not a burden, but it is a privilege. It is a honor to serve God as a young man and I remain grateful to God that I have the health of my youth to serve Him and to build His Church. After yielding and rejoicing in His will for my life, He began to surround me with a body of believers who I love dearly and so we, as a body, rejoice in the privilege of serving God and building the Church. As the new year has begun, I have reflected on all of these matters and I can agree with Jeremiah: The Lord’s faithfulness is great.

Entering this new year, the Holy Spirit asked me one question and told me to meditate on this before answering: What is my true ambition? Of course, the simple answer would have been to know Christ, but as I began to give an answer, I was stopped because I realized that I did not count the cost for such a statement. If knowing Christ is my true ambition, then every other ambition must be counted as insignificant compared to Him. This includes a great reputation among secular and religious leaders, a great outward ministry, a great professional career as a scientist, and a long list of other ambitions that I previous had. If knowing Christ is my true ambition, how is it reflected in my life? If God changes my life in such a way that none of my ambitions in life ever occur, will I be satisfied in Christ alone or will I harbor bitterness towards God? Will I pursue Him with a deeper fervor than I pursued my academic pursuits or is my response merely lip-service to God? Can I say truthfully as Jeremiah stated “The Lord is my portion”? I pondered these questions and gave God the same answer: to know Him. I will ask the reader the same question: What is your true ambition? In an honest assessment, what is the center of your life? Is it Christ alone or Christ + another ambition? If God strips your life down to the bare minimum so that your personal ambitions are never met, will you rejoice and be satisfied with Him or will you resent Him? Is Christ your portion and your expected hope or is your heart expecting another inheritance?

Let the answer to this question be the start of the new year for you.