NEVER LET THEM SEE YOU SWEAT?

"Never let them see you sweat."

That was the tag line for an advertisement, unfortunately one which we often adopt as our motto of the Christian life and thereby try live the life of the impervious. The life of the impervious is a pretend life  which is a phony life of "never let them see you sweat." It's a life of pretend, a life of the pretense of being invulnerable to the vicissitudes of life.

Sometimes those in sales who are not yet successful are told by their coaches, "Fake it 'til you make it," which means, "Appear to be successful and let everyone know that things are great beyond belief for you in spite of the fact that you're struggling, failing, and suffering the disappointment of 'No sale" after another, one rejection after another.

Would you be surprised if you caught Paul crying? He cried. At his last meeting with the elders of the Ephesian church, looking back, he said about himself, "[S]erving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials which came upon me [l]through the plots of the Jews . . ." The machinations of the enemies of the gospel caused Paul such hardship, such suffering, and such grief, he was brought to tears. He pulled back the curtain on his life and he let us see him sweat. 

Then there came the time to say good-bye for what the elders and Paul knew would be the last time and Luke records, "When he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And they began to weep aloud and embraced Paul, and repeatedly kissed him, grieving especially over the word which he had spoken, that they would not see his face again." That's hard. 

The paragraph throbs with emotion. These weren't men pretending that all was as they wanted it to be. Luke lets us see them sweat. 

We turn to II Timothy and we find Timothy, Paul's legate to a church in the ancient world to be timid, fearful, and sick at times. His fear was so evident that Paul wrote to Timothy telling him that fear is no excuse for not serving the Lord. We know how Timothy felt--serving the Lord without pulling our punches is hard in a fallen world. 

It's difficult to tell a person that he's a sinner, separated from God, and there's nothing, no work, he can do to right his immoral ship. It's hard to tell him what the gospel is not: it's not church membership, baptism, or even what his parents believed. it's hard to face the wrath of those offended by the gospel. Losing friends and family over the gospel is hard and we hate it with a passion; we shouldn't pretend that it's easy to deal with. 

Listen to Paul as he writes to Timothy: "I thank God, whom I serve with a clear conscience the way my forefathers did, as I constantly remember you in my prayers night and day, 4longing to see you, even as I recall your tears, so that I may be filled with joy. The life of the Christian who is off the bench and into the arena knows that it's that hard, hard to the point of crying.

In our quest to never let them see us sweat, we pretend that we have no regrets, no problems, no struggles. And more than that, we pretend we have no tears. We act as if we have arrived and nothing bothers us, when even Paul said that he hadn't "arrived." We want to appear as Mary Poppins whom we might paraphrase: practically impervious in every way. Bullet proof to the buffetings of time and tide. 

The non-Christian can see through our facade in a New York minute. He knows life isn't as the prosperity preachers pretend that it is, and he turns from the phony, the plastic man, the hollow man. He recognizes the superficial when he sees it. 

But the shortest verse in the Bible shows us that Jesus Himself cried at the graveside of Lazarus. 

There are those who, like Job's friends, tell us to "Buck up" when we're hurt Then they throw a verse at us. But there's One who's compassionate toward us. as we see in Psalm 56:8: "Put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book?" God notes the hairs on our head (Matt. 10:30;) He considers our frame that we are but dust (Ps. 103:14).

When we turn to the psalmists we see emotion, not emotionalism, of those believers who are crying out to God in their sufferings because the slings and arrows of those arrayed against them and they hurt.

Things are difficult in a fallen world for those seeking to live the Christ life, we don't pretend they aren't. To pretend we're bullet proof to the hurts life brings ignores the fact that, at times, tears are appropriate.

We have God's word that all things are working together for good, but while they're working, we hurt, and God notices and God cares, and God provides.