LIFE can be so crowded that we can easily lose focus of the things that matter, the things that are important, and sometimes try to do a whole lot of other things that we should not be doing at all.
divineinsight BY PHILLIP CHIDAVAENZI
Although this is the nature of the world — where the devil thrives on crowds, noise and speed — the church, sadly, has increasingly taken on the same trajectory, and there is need to revisit our mandate as individual believers and seek that which the Lord would have us do.
In crowds and noisy spaces, it is very easy for your concentration levels to falter and for your grip to slip. Your attention gets divided. This is not a good place to be in for a believer. It’s a broken place. The Bible talks about such situations. These are situations in which you carry burdens — “weights” according to the Bible — that can be your downfall as a Christian.
The apostle Paul understood the need to throw off every weight if one was to successfully pursue their calling and fulfil their mandate. He wrote to the church in Hebrews 12:2, “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith…”
Paul explained that our walk of faith is a race. Ask any sprinter or marathon runner and they will tell you that you can only be swift in the track when you don’t carry any load. You have to shed off any extra weight. I want to explain some of the “weights” briefly.
When you backbite other people in the congregation behind their backs, create circles in ministry, associating only with those you believe are of your “class” characterised by their kind of career, educational level, social background or such other variables, all these things become weights that will weigh you down and wear you out.
Let me tell that when you appoint yourself to superintend other believers, operating as some kind of spiritual detectives who can diagnose someone’s level of spirituality, you make yourself vulnerable to “the sin which doth so easily beset us”. When this happens, you cease to focus on what is important: the race that the Lord has set before you.
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But we learn in the scriptures that there is a race we must run. In this race, you do not seek to outrace others but to outdo your past by striving to do better than you did yesterday. The Bible says the “path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Proverbs 4:18).
The moment you begin to look into the lane of the one racing next to you, to set yourself up for a fall. Don’t poke your nose into your brother or sister’s affairs. The King James Bible makes reference to a believer who is “a busybody in other men’s matters” (1 Peter 4:15).
I find this expression quite strong and to me, the implication is that of concerning yourself with other people’s affairs to cream off rumour, which can only be a stench in God’s nostrils!
When you begin to operate in that manner, it means you are veering off into other people’s lanes so you can run their race. But what you will just end up doing is tripping them and yourself in the process. The only result is that you will trip and fall and you will not be able to run with patience the race that is set before you. Let me warm you, this will shipwreck your walk of faith. Let us keep our gaze trained on the author and finisher of our faith — Jesus Christ. God bless you!
Phillip Kundeni Chidavaenzi is the author of The Gospel of Grace: From the Old to the New Testament (2016) and Walking in the Spirit (2017). He can be contacted via email on [email protected]