Audience of One

The Smashing Pumpkins’ lyrics offered no comfort that rainy afternoon. They only seemed to inflame my dismay and anger my heart. I was 18 and confused. I had just attended a meeting with the administration of my would-be college when they told me they’d re-awarded my scholarship package to another student. “What?” I squeaked out, fear and fury in my voice. Haphazardly, the money set aside for me to cover the impending college costs had been removed from my availability to help another student.

I didn’t know what to do. I was going to have to pack up and leave school. I was going to have to tell my dorm roommate he was going to have more space than he expected. I was going to have to tell the people I knew I couldn’t stay. I would have to move back to the locale I was happily escaping. I was going to be cut off from my planned path to success, friends, and distinction. My world was crashing down. My future was crumbling. My hope was ripped from my hands. Needless to say, tears of overwhelming emotion welled up and overflowed. As the administrator let me exit with grace through the side door, I heard the song’s words: “Today is the greatest day I’ve ever known…” What a load of garbage!!! Today is the worst day ever!

Reflecting on the wisdom of a high-school coach, “When things don’t make sense, go for a run. It won’t solve the problem, but you will be tired from doing something positive, rather than just upset and helpless.” I ran off into the back end of campus and up into the hills behind it. For the next few hours, I cried out to the heavens, angry, confused, and scared, my words full of distress, doubt, and disappointment. Heavy rain poured down on me. Heavy thoughts nearly drowned me. What was I going to do? What would others say? What a failure I am. Where was I going to go? Anxiety pounded with the thunder and lightning. The worst storm to hit the town in 30 years was coinciding with the worst storm of my young life. My chance to escape the circumstances of my youth, step into a new stage of my path, and take a new level of self-governance hit a wall with no alternative. The center of my world was in crisis; everything was falling apart, injustice and confusion reigned supreme, and only darkness seemed ahead.

The Ever-Changing World

These kinds of questions seem to be at the forefront of our days. In fact, a whole industry of mindfulness has been born around the idea that you can hone personal discipline to manage the rising realities of anxiety, depression, confusion, and mental distress. It has developed into a survival mechanism steeped in secret truths about success, personally controlled paths to power, and self-focused journeys toward realization, individualism, and personal truth. When we are at the end of our rope, when we have no more strength, how do we muster the inner strength to survive?

Hope in an ever-changing world is a hot commodity. But how do we manifest it from our finite resources? In a world of subjective truths, the road to nihilism is paved with good intentions. The world as it truly is tells another story. Real hope comes from outside our ability to provide. Hope has to be placed in something higher than ourselves in order to actually have the power to transcend the mirth of our circumstances. So, where does this hope come from? It comes from one choice that transforms our experience and our understanding, allowing us to see truth that stands in authority over all our experience.

One Choice

Who is this One? Well, as we discover, it is the Lord Almighty, Jesus Christ, God of the universe, and Creator of all things. When our focus is on this one, our circumstances may not immediately change, but we have a hope that can lift us up and bring peace that surpasses our understanding. We often find the Lord’s provision is mighty, working in ways we do not see, growing our experience in God’s faithfulness. When we submit our lives to His lordship, He transforms us, strengthening our belief, restoring us, and giving us rebirth into His Kingdom, adopted as sons and daughters of the Most High. He makes us new creations in Christ and allows our old self to die so that His Spirit can indwell us and empower us. He delivers hope amid storms, helping His beloved image-bearers in their time of need.

Fortunately for those of us experiencing life’s storms, Jesus Christ came to call us out of the overwhelming circumstances of our existence and into a life newly defined in Him. He has set a choice before us: remain under the sway of the world, or be transformed by the renewing of our minds, hearts, and souls, and be reconciled to Him for all eternity. He calls us to seek Him first, seek Him fervently, and seek Him continuously so that we may know the abundance of his peace, his purpose, and his provision. Our belief in His promises are the bedrock of that choice. As Solomon told us, “A man plans his paths, yet the Lord determines his steps.” We can choose to go our own way, or choose to follow His.

When we look inward to our own solutions, we take our eyes off of His reality. Through Christ, He has suffered the depths of human struggle and is compassionate to our plight. Jesus came and experienced betrayal, mockery, undermining authorities, inhumane abuses, and was ultimately killed in the most brutal manner of that time. He did that for people who did what was right in their own eyes, living by the good of their own purpose, and the power of their own provision. Whatever we are going through, He knows the pain of the storm.

Yet He also knows the path to illumination. He shares the reality of Himself with us. He gives us His wisdom, saying, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” The ever-changing world, that seems out of control, sending us in every direction, rife with anxiety, depression, suicide, and chaos, has been overcome by the Lord of all things. The Apostle John tells us that the world was created for Christ; by whom, in whom, through whom, and for whom all things were made. The Alpha and the Omega has overcome the world. If there is someone to trust, He is the One.

The Audience of One

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.”

Who is the audience of this play? Who both sets us on the stage and directs the action of the players? In this experience of life as we know it, there is but one person in the audience, and it is the Almighty God who designed us for the good of His purpose. From the Garden to His Kingdom, He delights in walking with His people in the cool of the day. As we step across the stage, our lives are for Him alone; our audience of one. His goal is for us to know Him and be known by Him. He uses life’s circumstances to draw us near, to mold us, to make us, and to transform us into His likeness: faithful people serving a faithful God.

During the difficulty of my experience of disappointment and disconnection, God used the storm of my circumstances to develop my heart toward his desired focus in my life rather than my own. I was seeking the audience of myself. I was scared, isolated, and lost in the tempest of anxiety and self-focused reality. I was feeling as if I was left to my own resources rather than cared for by the resources of an all-powerful God. His restoration of my eyes to see his control changed my life. The storm illuminated the need to keep Him at the center, rather than a journey to my own success through my own provision. That day helped create a cornerstone for relying on Him, whether I am in the terror of the storm or the joys of His blessing.

The cornerstone I had rejected, and which the world continues to reject, became the foundation of my true security, known only in His presence. He knew my heart, my needs, and, most importantly, that my survival depended on Him. From creation, God’s intention was not for us to survive without Him. He desired us to live in community with Him, for Him, and indwelt by Him. In life’s storms, we become acutely aware of how empty living in our own power is. We feel its insufficiency. We see its limits. We know where that road goes. It’s a run in the downpour of the storm. Which, in God’s economy, allows us to experience the end of our ability to do anything to help ourselves. We need to rely on Him and let the Almighty do what we could never do.

In this, He blesses us with Himself. He gives us the peace, the provision, and the presence of His Spirit to help us through. His abundance comes not as we expect or conceive, but as his grace gives perfectly in light of our need. He knows exactly what we need and when we need it, and his gifts never fall short.

That same day I ran out in the storm, confused, afraid, and alone, the Lord gave me exactly what I needed: Himself. He showed me that my only way to survive these times is to cling to Him. I still had to leave school; uncertainties lay ahead, but I knew He was with me, and His intention for me was greater than my own plan.

This is the abundance of the Lord; the One who knows the inner being of our deepest need and gives us more than we would dare to ask. He knows us intimately, and calls us to rely on Him as the center of our experience in this world. He asks us to trust His goodness, His faithfulness, and His understanding above our own. He calls us to be confident in Him, because He has overcome all that the world can place before us. He is at the center of every aspect of your daily life. Let us seek Him as the center. Let us go to Him in our storms. He knows our every need and will open our eyes to His blessing and the good of His purpose as we seek Him. He will transform us as we live for this audience of one. If you want to understand more about that transformed life, click here and see that the Lord is good. Make the one choice that will define your very existence and give you shelter from the storm.