THE SAFEST PLACE TO BE

The civilized view of Jesus is that He is a cross between superman and our mother.  He always shows up just in time to protect us and save us from disaster.  His purpose is to ensure our safety, our convenience, our happiness and our comfort.  We all know the safest place to be is in the center of the will of God, right?  Just ask John the Baptist or Stephen or Paul - or Jesus at Golgotha, after His gut-wrenching prayer in the garden of Gethsemane: “My Father if it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken from me.  Yet I want your will, not mine” (Matt. 26:39 NLT).  This cliché, “the safest place to be is in the will of God” is taken from the diary of Corrie Ten Boom with a significant loss of contextual understanding, for Betsy, Corrie’s sister, wrote these words while they were in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. Corrie “lived” to tell the story but Betsy and the rest of Corrie’s family died.  Betsy’s statement was a declaration that to walk in the character and nature of God is always the right choice regardless of outcome, consequence or circumstances.  Her rational was that it was God’s will that their confinement area be infested with fleas because it kept the guards from coming inside and finding their Bible.  This statement was never meant to be justification for choosing the path of least resistance, least difficulty, and least sacrifice.  Somewhere along “The Way” the movement of Jesus Christ became civilized as “Christianity”.  The reality of Christ became a religion of man and we convinced ourselves that God’s optimal desire for our lives was to insulate us in a spiritual bubble where we risk nothing, sacrifice nothing, lose nothing and are safe.  Why does it hardly ever dawn on us that God may have higher priorities for us than keeping us safe, prosperous and healthy?  God’s will for us has little to do with our comfort - it is all about our contribution!  God would never choose for us safety at the cost of significance - our life should count for His Kingdom.  We should remember the Greek word “martys” is translated both “witness” and “martyr” in the New Testament, and is where we get our English word martyr.  John the Baptist understood what it meant to be a witness of Christ. God is not safe!  But He is just and good!