Sobriety In Good Times And Bad!
The evil one wants you intoxicated so you make short-sighted choices. He can use elation as well as despair to cloud your judgement. Christ calls us to avoid this!
It’s an old joke: The man and his dog are in the yard, and the man points to a place in the yard and tells the dog to go! What does the dog do? He sniffs the owner’s finger.
Misunderstanding or not understanding direction is widespread among humans. But what’s worse is that most of us know the right thing to do or the right direction to take, but we ignore wisdom and fall into the trap of our untamed desires and passions! How frustrating, especially when we are weeping over the consequences of our wrong choices.
I imagine this is how the Lord might feel if such temporary challenges could upset Him.
Whenever He tries to train my stubborn soul to go in a particular direction, I misinterpret His gentle guidance and head off in the wrong direction. It always seems that I prefer to learn the hard way!
Look at our Lesson for this Bright Tuesday in Luke 10:16-21:
The Lord said to his disciples, “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name! ” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. ” In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”
The 70 disciples were the company of men who followed Christ along with the 12 disciples called by the Lord when He began His preaching and ministering work. Many of these men would later go on to great and beautiful ministries of their own after the Lord’s Resurrection. My patron, St. Barnabas, was one of the 70.
Jesus had sent the 70 out to preach the Message that The Kingdom of God was coming. As proof of this truth, the Lord had given the 70 the authority to heal the sick and cast out demons. In other words, these men were the advance troops taking the fight against darkness and death to the enemy! They were thrilled to report to Christ that “even the demons” obeyed them because of their Lord!
But the Lord, while He is genuinely thrilled to hear these reports, cautions the disciples to keep their focus on the true glory of their spiritual victories.
The subtle dangers of being elated by spiritual victories constantly threaten to rob us of the joys of our spiritual growth.
It is the plan of the evil one to dazzle us with these good things at the expense of the best things. If the enemy can get you to focus on this or that spiritual experience, then perhaps he can tempt you toward spiritual pride or thinking highly of your abilities and drown out the reality that even these victories truly won are gifts of the grace of God.
We should rather rejoice that our names are written in heaven.
By keeping this perspective in our spiritual maturity, we won’t be derailed by pride or arrogance. We won’t be blinded by our own fantasy of “achievement” to the reality that even our maturity and the strength to choose rightly are graces given to us by God Himself. We will be set free to see that “all is a gift.”
Now imagine the outcome of that liberating perspective! You are now free to see God work in your life to overcome internal and external obstacles to your spiritual growth with the humble freedom to give glory to God and keep no credit for yourself. A wise man once said, “The world has not seen what God will do with a man who doesn’t care who gets the credit.” I would suggest there are several examples of this kind of a man in many of our saints in the Church, and their holy example is what we should follow.
St. Luke is a great example. He was from around the great city of Antioch in the First Century, and he was a well-educated man, a doctor by trade. He heard the Apostle Paul preach about Christ and became a close companion of St. Paul after he converted to Christianity. His education meant he was a valued communicator of the Message of Jesus to the point that God used his gifts to give us the Gospel of St. Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, both inspiring us with their wisdom and the practical history of the earliest days of the Faith. St. Luke is called “the Evangelist” because he was an influential sharer of the Good News (The Evangelion). His ministry in support of St. Paul meant he had a powerful helping ministry in spreading the Gospel all over the Roman Empire. St. Luke’s recurring symbol in Orthodox iconography is that of the calf, which symbolizes Christ’s sacrificial love.
Today, your spiritual growth is meant to become deeply part of the rest of your life based on you keeping your eye on the real source of rejoicing in your life—your name is written in heaven, you are a member of the Body of Christ, you are a part of the Church. With that perspective, you can see God work in your life to continue conforming your life to His image to be made in His likeness. Living a Normal Orthodox life means being sober beyond the intoxications of pride and despair!
P.S. As a disciple of the Word of God, with Paul, you illuminated all the earth and dispelled the gloom in writing Christ's divine Gospel.
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Fr. Barnabas Powell is the parish priest at Sts. Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene Greek Orthodox Church in Cumming, GA. He is also the founder of Faith Encouraged Ministries and produces the Faith Encouraged Daily Devotional on Substack. Watch the Faith Encouraged YouTube Channel here - https://www.youtube.com/@FaithEncouragedTV
