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Never Moved, Never Low
by Chas Stevenson

One of the secrets of the successful Christian life is the ability to tap into the supernatural, unshakable life in the Spirit. There is a place in Him that is always peaceful, always joyful, always quietly confident. Because of the intensity of the friction between light and darkness, we must use our faith to never be moved by outside stuff, but only moved by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. It's not necessarily easy, but we can only be a "tree, planted by the rivers of water" if we're immovable in daily life. We never get low when things go sideways. We never get too high when things go well. We're constant, just like God.
 

I'm also not moved by the stresses of the Church nor the responsibilities of it.  I'm not moved by crowds—lots or little.

To me, that means I'm not moved to cynicism by the condition of America or the direction of governments. (We'll fix the country and the world in the 1000 year reign.) I'm not moved by the immorality around us. (It's getting darker, just like God said it would, and the real Church is shining brighter—so it's going as planned.) I'm not put off by ungodly politicians. (They're not in the same Kingdom as me.) My joy and peace is not disturbed about illegal immigrants. (Many have been saved because they came.) And I'm not afraid of or flabbergasted at what terrorists or persecutors do. (Evil men will wax worse and worse). I'm not even depressed about the spread of Islam. (If we do our job, the gospel can spread faster than it). I'm not worried about "what's this world coming to", because I know exactly. Of course, I have to use my faith to cast all that off. And I do feel like I have a good grasp on the natural remedies, ideals, and policies that could fix it all—but I keep myself detached from the frustration of not being able to make the world go my way. I can do it because I know the future—we'll get our long-awaited Theocracy later, just as God planned.

I'm also not moved by the stresses of the Church nor the responsibilities of it.  I'm not moved by crowds—lots or little. Nor money—lots or little. I'm not moved by lukewarm believers. (For every one of them, there's another who's on fire). I'm not moved by unsaved family who refuseto bow to Jesus. And I'm not moved by the complicated troubles church people face. At the grass roots level, it gets messy, and we can't get entangled in it, "No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier" (2 Tim 2:4). We can't get choked by our own life affairs nor others' life affairs.

Quarantine all the bad stuff. That includes guarding ourselves from the bad part of mass-media—the jillions of videos and images that, really, we shouldn't be part of,  "have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret" (Eph 5:11-12). Our faith effort is to quarantine all bad news, evil doings, and possible gossip, or it will mess with our peace and joy.

The apostle Paul listed some of his challenges (more severe things than most of us have ever faced), and then he said, "But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God" (Acts 20:24).

Notice why he let nothing move him—it was so that he could keep his joy and finish his course. If we don't have joy, we don't have strength. If we let world troubles or Church troubles move us and depress us, we don't have joy. The truth is that everything's okay. Jesus  is on the throne. We're on the throne with Him. And we've got everlasting life. Think about it—in 80 years or so, everyone of us will be laughing it up, loving life, at perfect peace forever and ever. So, with an eternal perspective, what we deal with today is just a fleeting wind gust.