Living as a believer
Sunday 24th March 2024
Nevertheless, each person should live as a believer
in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them,
just as God has called them.
1 Corinthians 7:17 (NIV)
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Living as a believer
Do you sometimes come across a Bible verse as if for the first time? I say ‘as if’ because you know you have read it before, but you have not registered it, not properly. And now you are discovering it as if for the first time. 1 Corinthians 7:17 was like that for me last week.
How much of your time do we spend lamenting the situation you are in, trying to change it, or merely wishing it was different? This verse encourages me to believe that “the Lord has assigned” my situation to me. That may be hard to accept, especially if it is a particularly difficult situation, and even more so if you have been there for some time. Yet the Lord wants us to believe that he has not slipped up, and to trust him. He is my heavenly Father and he does not make mistakes.
I may not know exactly why the Lord wants me to be where I am at the moment. But you can still “live as a believer” in that situation, actively seeking to trust the Lord and to do what pleases him. I do not mean in any way to sound glib in saying that. I know what it is like to feel sorry for myself and to grumble about the situation I find myself in. And yet this verse encourages me to see my situation as from the Lord and to seek to live as a believer in it.
In the immediate context, Paul is thinking of several different situations: being married or single, being circumcised or uncircumcised and being slave or free. He is not saying that it is always wrong to change our circumstances (although the married are not free simply to leave the marriage, and the circumcised are not able to be uncircumcised!), and there may be other reasons why we must alter our situations. But what he is saying is that I do not needto change my situation for me to be able to live as a believer.
That is both liberating (in that I can live as a believer right here and now) and challenging (in that it encourages me to accept my situation as assigned by the Lord).
Father, give me the grace and wisdom I need to accept the situation you have assigned to me, and to live faithfully as a believer in it. Amen.
Yours warmly, in Christ,
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister)