Someone sent in the following question based on a quote from a recent Catch.

The Quote:
“God’s purposes in our lives are… found out by failing to do the right thing and finding out, lo and behold, that God wanted to bring His presence and His purposes (His will) out of our failure. God wants to bring forth life in us, but He can’t do that without a death.”

The Question:
Can you say any more (perhaps in a future Catch) on how God brings his presence and purposes out of our failure? What does true “victorious Christian living” look like after our great fall into his grace?

First of all, “victorious Christian living” is a misnomer, at least what most evangelical Christians have in mind when they hear that phrase is. Victorious Christian living sounds like someone sailing through life, or perhaps I should say, sailing over life, because that is the implication: someone always on top of everything, always happy, always fine. My mother was like this. In the name of victorious Christian living, she always presented to people a sunny disposition, even when I knew that wasn’t an accurate representation of what she was really feeling. I think she felt this was her responsibility; this was her witness.

However, being on the inside made me privy to information hidden to others. I knew that pain, sorrow and sin existed in our family, but it was kept under wraps in the name of victorious Christian living. That made this kind of victorious Christian living a misrepresentation of reality. It was false.

True victorious Christian living is actually spelled out in the verses immediately prior to the one quoted in the Catch: “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:10).

It looks like this: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).

Notice there is a sustainable reality here, but it is set in the midst of pressure, confusion, harassment, and tragedy. There is nothing hidden here, but there is an undeniable reality of the life of Christ in the midst of these things, making that life even more palatable. This version of the victorious Christian life has nothing put on. It is the real life of Christ in the real struggle of human existence.

I’m sure my mother had an impact with her sunny disposition, but she would have had a much greater impact, and connected in a real way with a lot more people, had she not hidden the things that threatened her faith.

True victorious Christian living would be to experience God’s presence in the midst of the things that try to defeat it, and to live in such a way that everyone around you sees the reality of both.