Bruises Like Rocky or Poker Face?
Who does not like the Rocky Balboa saga? The films of the poor boxer with Italian roots exceeded all possible expectations. The genius of Sylvester Stallone overflowed in all the parameters of each production. I have enjoyed deeply every movie until today made about it. There is a formula that never fails to surprise me in this history. Regardless of how many punches he receives to the chin or how many hits to the ribs (and that’s a lot), the persevering Rocky knows how to summon all his strength to stand up and finish the fight. In the midst of a symphony of pain where his body is the unique instrument, Balboa discovers a transcending truth: his success depends on continuing to combat and not giving up. This is what I call the bruises lifestyle. A lifestyle that requires absolute conviction on the part of those who practice it. Such daily living will be the breeding ground for the joy of God in the lives of His sons and daughters. However there is a great but in living with bruises, and I mean honesty. On the contrary, millions of humans beings choose from the moment they get up and until they go to bed to wear a false face. This is what I call the poker face lifestyle. Poker is a betting game in which players, with all or part of their cards hidden, place bets on an initial bid, with the total sum of the bets falling on the player or players with the best combinations of cards. In short, this game is about players with face down cards and uncertain bets. In real life these people are never satisfied with the cards they received from God to live. These crowds are the ones that find unbearable to hear about divine sovereignty or the inalienable right of the Creator to determine the duration of our existence. Such daily living will is the breeding ground for the art of complaints, the greatest exponent of irreverence before God and all that He represents.
“Delight thyself also in the LORD: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”
(Psalm 37: 4 King James version)“Do everything without grumbling or arguing.”
(Philippians 2:14 New International version)
King David and Paul the apostle agreed on several issues. But joy and complaints took various of the headlines written by them, proving this way how the discrepancy between the bruises lifestyle and the poker face lifestyle is not new at all. The word joy came from the Latin term gaudium. It is a virtue instilled by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who decide to follow God. It is complacency felt by the Christian in the extension of the heavenly kingdom and its justice. Joy is the intensity of the senses focused on the certainty of the existence of God and His miraculous deeds on our behalf. In the Bible joy is part of the fruit of the Holy Ghost (see Galatians 5:22) and the most expressive badge of an active faith. I must confess that it remains a mystery to me, how and when such virtue is poured incessantly in each of my steps, when the days are sunny and predictable, when the days are gray and unpredictable. Joy magnifies happiness and wipes tears. It personalizes the divine nature of God in each of us and elevates our limited understanding from the dust of everyday life to the eternity of His fidelity. Nevertheless, we were never promised by God an easy life from this side of eternity. Natural aging together with health problems and the burden of daily stress produces a real wear and tear on all people. We have to be honest with God and with ourselves about our challenges, battles, fears and uncertainties, summing up about our spiritual condition. The knock-backs of life will not stop coming against us. The unforeseen events that arise and destroy our advance planning seem to multiply without ceasing. Is God aware of what is happening? Off course He is. Why does God allow it to happen? To be honest there are some cases in which we manage to understand the work of God in someone’s life but there are so many examples where we, his children, do not understand why God works the way He does. And this is ok. As long as we do not lose sight of the fact that God is still in control of our existence. We walk by faith and not by common understanding. Each wound suffered in our heart, each pain experienced in our soul, each mark kept in the depths of our personality reflects a difficult stage conquered, a valuable lesson learned, a precious bruise treasured. And this is how Christian life goes. We learn to find God in the smallest details as well as in the crucial moments of life. There is no other way to be a Rocky on the faith! We all need to find our unique personal joy. Let us not make the mistake of believing that it is perceptible in the same way to every son of God. Each one must decipher his own way of experiencing it. But I do know the infallible rule that joy resides permanently in the person and presence of God. Happiness depends on favorable external circumstances but joy exceeds such parameters. It will externalize the unchanging character and the eternal promises of our great God fulfilled (and yet to be fulfilled) in the person of Jesus Christ. You should know that joy and pleasure are not synonymous always. Pleasure cannot be sustained without the experience producing it. You eat and experience pleasure. You see a beautiful view and experience pleasure. You stop eating, and the pleasure stops. You stop your looking, and the pleasure stops. The same goes for most of the pleasure of this world. Joy is a horse of another color. It can be sustained beyond the experience producing it. Think back to other times when you have not felt like rejoicing, but you do it anyway. Why? Because joy is an inside job and it is done by the Holy Spirit in you. Joy rests on the absolute conviction that God will neither leave us nor forsake us. Joy becomes real since the second i observe at the things that are not seen and i take out my thoughtfulness from those things that are seen. Joy is born when we begin to want and seek what we truly need: Jesus. If the choice at this moment is between getting depressed by the growing evil in the world and its lack of moral, civic and Christian values or turning to Jesus and recovering the joy that flows from a relationship based on our trust in him, it seems to me the answer is very easy to digest. Nothing brings joy like right living. Let me talk now about complaints. We are all searching to understand and struggling to reveal who we are. Now the issue is this. We all have to decide at some point of our life who we want to please. To other people? Ourselves? God? There are some people we never stop trying to please. The desire to please one another is part of the natural bond among all humans but the desire to please God it is our remarkable answer as His children to the unfailing love we have received from Him. In my case, the desire to please God is clothed with an immediacy that i cannot ignore because it is revealed again and again in my living. In order to please God I have to obey Him. The thing with obedience is that it has two projections. The first speaks of trust; the second speaks of complaints. A complaint is an act or action of complaining about something or someone. The poker face lifestyle is always the manifestation of unease and despondency. It is the pedantic skill of justifying mediocrity by not having control of a specific matter in the course of life. It is daring to question the methods and processes that God applies to our faith. There are many who never get past this projection and make it their perennial destination. Such are the ones who consider themselves wiser, worthier and more loving than God. We have all known people who tried to please everybody and end up totally miserable themselves. You can spend your whole life hiding the card of your sadness, the card of your loneliness and the card of your spiritual emptiness. You can waste your years betting on fleeting pleasure, the excessive love for money and the self-deception that you can live to please expectations of others about you. Or you can stand up and choose just one to honor and live for. Do you trust God enough to let him lead you on your path? Do you believe that the will of God is good, agreeable and perfect for you? Is there any man or woman more faithful or unconditional to us than God? Could anyone question God’s moral authority to rule our existence? He is our maker. He is always present. He is our loving Father. He sacrificed His beloved son for us. God does not have love, He is love. You can complaint about it (it will not change anything) or you can trust Him. What our admirable Lord Jesus accomplished at Calvary has made all the difference. His cross put an end to the old covenant and started the new covenant of grace. The new covenant is all about a real relationship. This is what trust means. When a person places his/her faith in Jesus and gives Him his/her life a relationship of trust begins between them. Not because it is imposed on us but because we trust God and know that He loves us. Christ went further and guaranteed the eternity of his brethren, asking the Father that they dwell where He dwells. We all know what a dark day or season is. It is a day or season when anything that can go wrong goes wrong. But let me tell you something, it does not have to be like that forever. Maybe our context changes, maybe it won’t change, maybe the problem will be solved, maybe not, but our interpretation should change. Regarding what? Regarding God is with us. He supports us and tells us yet: Do not fear, I will help you. Now it is up to us to decide. Are we going to live with a poker face? Or are we going to fight to the end like Rocky even though we end up covered in bruises in the process?