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Thursday April 21, 2016

 

Your Secular Pursuit Has Divine Potential

We who have chosen to follow Jesus have a tendency to compartmentalize our lives into two categories, our spiritual and our secular goals. The spiritual goals have to do with our duties and responsibilities towards God, like becoming the right person and fulfilling some form of service to God. By default, our secular goals are all the other pursuits in our lives. On the one hand, we know that God is interested in our spiritual goals and on the other hand, we hope and pray that God would become more involved in our secular pursuits.

 

In reality, God is far more interested in our secular endeavors than we can imagine. The reason being, our secular endeavors have more divine potential than most of our spiritual ones. Furthermore, it is in the sphere of our secular pursuits where secular people are watching us like at school, at work, at the gym, at the salon… It is in these secular environments where an encounter with the grace of God is so desperately needed.

 

The rebuilding of the walls for Nehemiah and the workers, was not a religious goal, it was a secular one. Some years before Nehemiah, another group of people rebuilt the temple and reestablished temple worship; that was a spiritual goal, however rebuilding the walls was a secular one. In the case of Nehemiah, far more people watched what they were doing. All the surrounding nations were far more interested in their secular goal than they were in their spiritual ones.

 

Your Difficulties and Struggles Have Divine Potential

Know that just like everyone else, as we pursue our secular goals, be it friendships, marriage, education, businesses, or entertainment, whatever the goal is, we will encounter difficulties and struggles. However, for those of us who have decided to follow Jesus, the struggles and difficulties are much harder because we have to operate within a limited set of rules. Unbelievers can get away with certain actions and behaviors that we cannot employ. Non-believers have more wiggle room to bend the rules; we on the other hand, are expected to adhere to a higher moral and ethical standard. This is not because we are better than others are; it is simply because we profess to be believers therefore more is expected. However, God wants to demonstrate His power through us to those who are watching, as they witness our struggles and difficulties.

 

Nehemiah and the workers encountered all sorts of difficulties and struggles during the rebuilding process. They were threatened physically, mocked, and embarrassed. They became the victims of predatory lending, some lost their businesses, and others their properties; even their children were sold into slavery. God however, was using their secular pursuit as well as their difficulties and their struggles, to demonstrate His power and His glory to all those who were watching.

 

Nehemiah 6:15-16 NIV

So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days.16 When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.

 

There will always be someone watching us. Moreover, although we tend to compartmentalize our lives between the spiritual and the secular, for our Heavenly Father it is all the same. God expects us to act differently not because we are better, but rather because we are different. The difference is that we place our hopes and dreams on God and the secular pursuit, and the difference with God is that He wants to use our secular pursuits, our difficulties, and our struggles to demonstrate His power and glory through us.