Seeking True Safety

Contending for true comfort

Safety is a word that is saturating social media. From Instagram to podcasts, from radio programmes to blogs, this really is the buzz word for our times.

Feeling safe, sensing trust, belonging somewhere are central to our place and personhood. We have responsibility to ensure the wellbeing, the right care, the oversight of the weak, vulnerable, marginalised. We are called to instil and cultivate the dignity and worth of humanity in every encounter we have, every thought, word and deed.

But in our pursuit and good desire to create safe environments, have we kept God’s vision of safety, of belonging, of trust, or have we become encultured and conformed to that of the world’s?

As God’s children, we seek to be definers and enactors of His kingdom values as seen through His perfect, holy sight, as seekers of safety by the Spirit not of self-need or ideology.

Let me explain…

What does safety and belonging mean to you?

Is it that sense of the true glad tidings of comfort and joy. Being at ease. No hint of pain or discomfort, no conflict or battle. Is this what we seek for ourselves, our children and each other?

I wonder whether we have misunderstood comfort for conformity. Whether we have replaced safety with silence, whether in the pursuit of peace, we have followed the broad path of the world and become passive in our reticence to resist.

If we seek to be true disciples of Christ, to learn and live out the way of the cross then the place for safety and comfort must be established in God’s kingdom, not our own or that of others.

As we do, we arm ourselves as secure soldiers of Christ Himself, not silenced, passive followers of the crowd.

Let us be prepared to ask ourselves the hard questions that the gospel itself asks of us. As we seek to live under the authority of Scripture and the gaze of our loving Heavenly Father, we seek the discipleship way through faith alone, by grace alone in Christ alone, all for the glory of God alone.

This is the faith we herald and faithful inheritors of the legacy handed down to us from the Reformers and Evangelicals since.

Let us face the challenge of the gospel with battle cries first against the desires of our hearts, in order to be ambassadors for Christ in our culture.

Here are just some questions we might consider:

• Has godliness become synonymous with a peaceful personality, with those ‘easy to be around’, relaxed company?

• Do our responses to situations reflect the emotions of God, and His just view of a situation?

• Might there be times a peaceful personality is soft passivity, avoidance of call, detachment from true empathy?

• Is calmness correct as we pass by mistreatment, neglect, homelessness, a struggling mother, a yelling spouse?

• Is passivity always peaceful? Is confrontation always counselled?

For this we need the Spirit’s discernment and the abundant grace of God at work within us, fanning into flame the fire of our souls for the cause of Christ in our culture.

As Puritan Richard Sibbes1 wrote, let us:

Keep grace in exercise. It is not sleepy habits but grace in exercise that preserves us.... It stands upon Christ's honour to maintain those that are in his work .

Let us work and fight in the Christian life, seek true empowerment and impact as we clothe ourselves in Christ’s armour.

Let us keep alert to Satan, to his intention to trip us up in every area of our lives: in our families, how we are in the world before non-believers, and how we are in church.

The evil one’s device is always to distract and divide, to disconnect us from each other and from God, to detract from the glory of God by directing us to the temporary attraction of something we covet more. As we search our souls, we do so truly safe in Christ, responsible for the deep real change of our hearts and that of others in our care, we search for renewal and transformation that might cost our comfort and expose our coveting for a life of ease. But Christ has come for life to the full and in His light and in the fullness of His grace, the certainty of His victory, we take one step at a time on His way, His truth and His life.

For the glory of God alone

As His children

Together

Footnotes: 1. Works of Richard Sibbes, volume 1, 'The smoking flax and the bruised Reed', (Banner of Truth, UK), p81.

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Emily Lucas is married to Ben and together they have three children. She is Tutor for Women and Student Welfare at Union School of Theology where she mentors in Church History and Systematic Theology. Emily is also studying for her doctorate in Puritan Anthropology.

Views expressed in blogs published by the Latimer Trust are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Latimer Trust.