The other day I was walking through a security gate at the prison where a
Sergeant who is familiar to me typically works. As I was coming through he
said to me, “Hey Doc (almost everybody calls me “Doc” at the prison), you
are a smart guy. How do you deal with all that happens in here every day?
How do you not let it get to you?” I replied, “You know it is because of my
love for Jesus Christ and my faith in Him that I make it through each day.”
He then replied, “You know, as soon as you started saying that I knew that
is what I need. I need to start talking with Him more. That is what I’m
going to do. Thanks Doc.”
It is interesting how people consider things. The Sergeant has clearly
linked someone’s intelligence with their ability to cope with life’s
pressures. Yet as we go through life it becomes clear that how intelligent
someone is has little to do with how well they cope with things. This is
because how we cope has much more to do with what we believe, where we put
our hope and trust, and our perspective about things than if we are smart.
My answer to the Sergeant made no reference to intelligence because by God’s
grace I have learned that whether I am “intelligent” or not, I would not
have come through almost nineteen years in the prison as well as I have if
it were not for my relationship with Jesus Christ and what He has done in
me. This isn’t to say that I don’t succumb to the pressures of my job on
occasion (as you know I blogged about this a month or so ago) but for the
majority of my time at the prison, God has blessed me with a remarkable
strength that has had absolutely nothing to do with my level of
intelligence.
God deserves all the glory because it wasn’t my intelligence that brought me
into a relationship with Him. It was His grace and mercy and His calling
upon my heart that even allowed me to consider Him. As a matter of fact, as
I consider the things that are really important in life such as marriage,
raising children, how to help others, how to handle sexuality, how to handle
money, how to respond to just about every aspect of life, I have learned
infinitely more from Jesus Christ and His word than anything I was able to
glean from my intelligence. I shudder to think what my life would look like
right now if I had relied only on my intellect to navigate this life.
The fact of the matter is whether we are talking about salvation or how to
live our lives before God, if it is not He who is working in us, we are
utterly lost. I think of the many years I squandered trying to figure out
how to be holy before God as if it was a matter of intellect. Yet, it wasn’t
until God taught me that if I was ever going to live in victory over my
sinful nature and “old man” it was only going to be through the power of
Christ, that I started to really thrive in life.
John Newton said it so much better than I can when he wrote:
“By various maxims, forms, and rules, that pass for wisdom in the schools, I
sought my passions to restrain; But all my efforts proved in vain. But since
my Savior I have known my rules are all reduced to one, to keep my Lord by
faith in view, This strength supplies, and motive too.
For Him,
Rob