We can be committed to the cause that faithfully serves God and upholds His truth, yet false forces that undermine Him can seem to win out and defeat us. This is understandably painful and demoralising. Yet we should neither be overly surprised, nor despair.
The One we follow as Lord was the greatest seeming loser of all. God’s King and Messiah, the Saviour of the world, was mercilessly slain in the most miserable and shameful death, gloated over by His enemies. That perhaps makes us look on our losses in not such a disastrous light!
This paradox was prefigured on Palm Sunday in the strongest irony, as Jesus, the triumphal King of the Universe, was hailed as such while riding on a juvenile donkey! To worldly power this looks plainly ridiculous. However, the true Lord, Saviour and King wins His victory not by power and force, but by the weakness of dying on a cross.
But Jesus only seemingly lost; dying to pay the price for the world’s sin, He overcame evil with love, destroyed sin, reversed death, secured our resurrection form the dead, the making of the new heaven and earth and the fulfilment of God’s eternal purposes!
We follow in Jesus’ footsteps; through faith in Him, He turns our weakness and defeats into revelations of His ultimate victory that revive and strengthen us.
Grace and love, Jonathan.