A well-known psychiatrist was recently asked what he had found to be the basic problem troubling the majority of his patients. His reply was: “Insecurity.”
Unquestionably there are many people suffering today from insecurity based upon deep-seated mental problems which have their roots in past experience, environmental and otherwise.
But we believe the lack of security which is so much a part of the lives of many today is spiritual in origin. Man has been created for companionship with God, and until this fellowship of spirit is established he is restless, ill at ease, and insecure.
In Jesus Christ all of this can be changed. Not that the problems, pressures and overwhelming circumstances of life will cease, but when Christ lives and rules in the heart of a man he no longer faces life alone, for the sovereign God of the universe lives in him in the person of the Holy Spirit and all things become new. For the past there is forgiveness; for the present there is divine companionship; for the future there is absolute assurance.
God increases multiplied blessings to them that trust him, and it is the Christian’s privilege and duty to know what they are and appropriate them to the fullest extent.
Even in the heart of the most benighted pagan—and he may live in an exclusive residential area or in the jungles of the Amazon—there lurks a sense of longing, of separation, and futility. This emptiness expresses itself in excesses, in various religious rites, or an unending search for diversion and pleasure. It produces animosities, fears, discontent, complexes, and various mental and physical reactions which torment one’s life.
Into such a situation comes the calm, assuring voice of the living Christ: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
“Rest unto your souls”—that is security. That is the comforting good news which the Father has not chosen to reveal to the wise of the world, but unto babes.
The Christian should be aware of the security that is his which stems from faith in and commitment to Christ as Saviour and Lord.
First, he is secure in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. The salvation wrought out for him on the Cross of Calvary was complete. There is nothing we can do to add to its efficacy, there is nothing we can do to take away its sin-cleansing power. It is ours to be received as the free gift of God’s loving grace. Furthermore, once a man receives this, it is a continuing experience.
For the Christian there should always be a sense of security, for he stands on an immovable Rock in the midst of a changing and uncertain world. The apostle Paul tells us that man can lay no other foundation, for there is none, and this foundation is Jesus Christ.
Relief to a drowning swimmer is the sudden discovery of a firm rock on which to stand. How much more wonderful is it for man, surrounded by the problems and difficulties of life, to realize suddenly that underneath there is One who never changes, and that around him are the everlasting arms.
The Christian is also secure because it is his privilege to enjoy the comfort of God’s presence in the Holy Spirit who was sent into the world to counsel and comfort those that trust Christ. Confronted with problems and decisions to be made, buffeted by combinations of circumstances over which he has no control nor solution, the Christian should have the assurance in his heart that he is not alone, that God is not only near, he is available to help and does so in the light of his love and eternal purposes.
We are not told in vain that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” We have the comfort of knowing that in the inscrutable and perfect will of God all things, regardless of their immediate import, work for good to them who love him.
Another source of Christian security is the assurance we have of God’s sustaining grace. The cause of Christ has suffered at the hands of those who seem to picture Christianity as a life of unending protection from viscissitudes and reality. Nothing could be further from the truth. We who have committed ourselves to the living God through his Son are not carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease. We know we are not only tested by adversity, but there are times when our greatest witness for the faith finds its expression out of the troubles and sorrows through which we are called to pass. In all these things we can rest secure in the grace which God unfailingly supplies to those who are his own.
Life entails decisions, many of them minor in import, others crucial and affective. To the Christian is given the privilege of divine guidance in the making of decisions. The One who sees the past, the present, and the future will, in his infinite love and mercy, show us the way we should take.
Many are the Christians who have prayed earnestly for guidance and have had fulfilled for them the promise: “And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it; when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left” (Isa. 30:21).
Basic to a Christian’s sense of security is a knowledge of the love of God. The people of this world desperately need to be loved, and God has loved them. The Cross is the central evidence of God’s love, and this love abounds toward us richly. Little children bask in the knowledge of parental love, often an unspoken devotion but real nonetheless.
How much greater is God’s love, and the therapeutic value of that love when we accept it through faith in Jesus Christ! With a realization of this overwhelming fact there comes to one a security against which even the demons of hell cannot prevail.
Our Lord speaks of this when he says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
We hear much these days about a “guilt complex.” Unquestionably there are unfortunate sufferers from a sense of guilt which may be because of imagined wrongs. But the world’s great problem is that so few have a sense of the guilt of sin and sin’s affront to a holy God.
To avoid the fact of sin or the effects of sin is to be utterly unrealistic. Furthermore, to ignore the wonderful news that the penalty and guilt of sin has been removed forever for the believer through the atoning work of the Saviour is to disregard the greatest news of all history.
At the center of man’s security is the Christ of Calvary. In and through him the weary soul finds rest and hope now and for all eternity.
