Porch Talk: There Is Still A Lot in Life That Comforts and Even Delights Me

Jesus Christ has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood,  

and has set me free from all the power of the devil.

There is still a lot in life that comforts and even delights me. 

• Especially in love and in its many expressions there is delight, encouragement, and great comfort. 
• I might perhaps consider that some of life’s problems appear to be relieved by it. 

Yet even this comfort is taken away from me by God’s Word, 

• for there is a curse in all relationships that are outside of Christ. 
• For they are the relationships of which Christ says: 
• If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be My disciple (Luke 14:26). 

The reality is that in such love outside of Christ people experience the curse. 

• It does not serve for the healing of life, and instead there is deterioration of it in spite of that love. 
• In reality, there is even a deterioration of that love itself. 
• The root of life is not being healed by such love. 

What the Word of God reveals and discovers for me is the curse with respect to life 

• and in it the irrevocable nature of its distressful need. 
• Behind the curse my guilt functions. 
• The misery of life in the light of God’s Word becomes for me guilt, 
• and God can take hold of that misery to show me that guilt. 

I can harden myself in that distress, and accuse God. 

• However, through the need God is also able to break me down and crush my spirit. 
• I must keep in mind that it was not the distress that broke me down, 
• but it was God through the distress. 

The need itself does not drive me to God, 

• but God can use the burdens of life. 
• Thus, the general awareness of the need itself is not a point of contact for grace, 
• but God uses it to take hold of me. 
• He does this by making me see the misery of life as guilt.

This is necessary, since otherwise the sense of need might have immersed me in self-pity. 

• For it seems that at times, I can have a violent reaction to the misery of life, 
• while at other times there is a disabling self-pity. 

The one as well as the other defeats and frustrates life. 

• God cuts through this with His Word, and makes me see the misery as guilt: 
• what have I made of His world and of the life that was His? 
• It is then that the world’s misery comes to me in a different sense. 

For then alone can I see Christ, or rather, then I have already seen Christ. 

• At that point, I see that there is truly a connection between Christ and the need, even as it is illumined by God’s Word. 
• Christ can only be revealed as He is presented to me as the One Who has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, 
• and has set me free from all the power of the devil. 

What am I to make of this, 

• if I have not seen the misery as guilt? 
• This is the central point, and I cannot conceive of Christ in any way, 
• unless I receive Him as He is presented here. 

That presumes however that I understand that by my sins I have sold out my life, 

• and see myself as under the dominion of Satan. 
• That means that my life is meaningless and futile. 
• It is through this power of Satan that life is subjected to vanity, 
• no matter how beautiful and how rich it may appear to be at times. 

Life serves no real purpose then, 

• for everything that belongs to Satan is meaningless. 
• Even as his own existence is senseless – he is against himself – 
• thus he has also imprinted a stamp of senselessness on all of life. 

The meaning of life, after all, is found in my response to God’s love, to be in fellowship with God! 

• It is for this purpose, namely that I grow in fellowship with God 
• and give Him a response to His love, that I live on earth. 
• If that is removed from life it becomes senseless, whatever the appearance of its outcome may be. 

If there is no particular burden in life for me, 

• my living must still discover it to me. 
• And how shall I understand the meaninglessness of life except through the Word of God, 
• which enables me to discover the meaning of life? 

Adapted Excerpt from The True Life by Simon G. De Graaf