Though often thought of as one, difficulty is not a demon on a rampage out to destroy us.
To the contrary, seasons of difficulty are fertile fields where we find opportunities for spiritual growth. Granted, these are our most painful seasons of growth but when we use them as opportunities, rather than accusing them of being demons and hindrances, the product is positive fruit in our lives.
All of us are faced with significant challenges that present themselves in differing degrees. In our own personal processes of development we internalize means that we use to cope when life becomes difficult. Some of these are helpful and have a positive result in our lives. Some are not and bring with them a negative result. The way we deal with difficulty has an effect on our overall being. Our means of handling difficulty also effects those around us either positively or negatively. C.O.P.E. represents four steps that, when incorporated into our lives, becomes a means to growing personally and spiritually through seasons of difficulty. It also serves as a platform upon which the whole of life finds a sure and solid foundation.
COMMITMENT
Commitment involves a personal surrender and commitment to God's grace for and in our lives.
We have to be careful here. We aren't talking about granting some flippant mental assent to the reality of God's existence or to the historical account of a man that we call Jesus who was crucified on the Cross. Commitment mandates that we surrender our will to God. Commitment is a conscious, willful, and determinate act on our part. Commitment requires that we redirect the energy that we normally invest in developing and projecting a self-centered personality. Rather than investing ourselves in ourselves and in our own selfish aims, we invest ourselves in God and His will for our lives.
It makes sense to invest in a plan that can't fail. God's plan for our lives is the greatest means for personal development in this life and carries with it even greater dividends and promises. Eternity is a long time and His plan for our lives includes everlasting life with Him in a realm of living that goes far beyond anything that we can build for ourselves. We begin our journey toward that realm by making the commitment in the here and now.
Psalm 37:23-24 says, "The LORD delights in the way of the man whose steps he has made firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand." The first section of Psalm 37:5 says, "Commit your way to the LORD."
In 1 Peter 6-7 we read, "those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good."
In the process of living life we stir up most of our own misery. Our own thoughts and deeds sow seeds that grow up as hardship and conflict. However, there are those times when others are responsible for the seasons of difficulty that we must walk through. In either case, our most reliable recourse is to simply commit our life and living to our faithful Creator who knows more about our situation than we are able to see or understand. God sees all and knows all. He allows us new beginnings in Christ and invites us to allow Him to orchestrate our lives.
ORGANIZATION
Once we've made a personal commitment to God we have to orient ourselves to God's precepts and principles.
The lives we live go through a process of conditioning that begins while we are yet in the womb and continues throughout our adult lives. We are conditioned by the individual influences that bear upon us. We are conditioned to love or hate. We are conditioned to acceptance or prejudice. The list of attitudes that are conditioned upon us is too long to list exhaustively but these few examples yield an adequate enough picture of how the conditioning process affects us.
We are also conditioned in the way we think about God. The forces of ungodliness condition us to reject God and to live our lives any way we choose. Even the models presented by the Church have caused many to reject God. Too often, the models of the Church cloak faith in God and His Son Jesus in such a way that childlike faith is lost in a regiment of man made rules and regulations. Despite the idiocy of the world and the failures of the Church, we have to organize our lives around the precepts and principles of God that we find in Holy Scripture.
Psalm 115:5 says, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." By mining God's precepts and principles and by applying them to our lives we discover a lighted pathway that leads us safely and contentedly through the journey of life.
In verses 77 and 78 of this same Psalm we read, "Let your compassion come to me that I may live, for your law is my delight. May the arrogant be put to shame for wronging me without cause; but I will meditate on your precepts." The more we mine and apply the precepts of God the better we understand and sense the compassion of God.
Again, from verses 65-68 of this same Psalm we read, "Do good to your servant according to your word, O LORD; teach me knowledge and good judgement, for I believe in your commands. Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word. You are good, and what you do is good; teach me your decrees." God has our best interest in mind. The precepts and principles contained in Holy Scripture provide a wealth of knowledge that equips us to make the right decisions about all the issues of life.
We spend a significant amount of time ingraining patterns of thought in our minds. We condition ourselves to think and act the way we do. Our minds, our mental processes, have to be retrofitted and organized with a new set of references. The precepts and principles of God provides us with a new set of references that have proven themselves reliable and profitable over many centuries.
PRAYER
Prayer is the place where our encounter with God is actuated. Prayer is an act of hope, an expression of hope, and the sign of hope for the world. Prayer enables us to look toward the fulfillment of our hope, toward the reality to which the human heart aspires.
In prayer we express to God our feelings, our thoughts, and our sentiments. We wish to love and be loved, to understand and to be understood. Only God loves us perfectly. In prayer we open our hearts and our minds to this God of love. And it is prayer that make us one with the Lord where we share more deeply in His life and His love.
Prayer brings eternity into this dimension that we call time and brings eternal wisdom into the dimension of human knowledge, feeling and understanding. It brings eternal love to the dimension of the human heart where our hearts are broken and softened by its riches toward us. Here, in prayer, we are able to go beyond ourselves by reaching out toward God and progress beyond the limits established by things, space, and time.
Like searching the Scriptures for gems of truth, praying takes time and we deprive ourselves of spiritual sustenance and focus if we fail to do these two works that are essential to spiritual health. We deprive God of our personal devotion, and ourselves of divine health, when we insist that our faith life resemble the fast food grab it and go lifestyle of contemporary society.
Prayer was one of the defining characteristics of Jesus while He lived among us. During His earthly ministry He modeled a life of prayer before His disciples. At their request He taught them to pray. Toward the end of His earthly ministry, and just prior to His arrest on the Mount of Olives, He told His disciples, "Pray that you will not fall into temptation." After spending time alone in prayer He found that His disciples had fallen asleep and asked them, "Could you men not keep watch with me one hour?"
Without a doubt, prayer is the most neglected work in the life of believers. We fashion all sorts of excuses for not praying even though we are told to "pray continually" (1 Thessalonians 5:17). The busyness of our modern lives does have a bearing effect that rips time away from us and should, rather than becoming an excuse for not praying, challenge us to find time to offer devotionally in prayer to God. Intercession and supplication are ministries of the Church, of believers in Christ, and much of our weakness and ineffectiveness as the Body of Christ is directly related to the prayer drought that exists in the Church world today. Our own weakness and ineffectiveness as individual believers owes its source to this same neglectfulness.
Prayer is the lifeline that tethers us to our source of spiritual health. We must pray. We must learn to pray. Prayer is an expedition of ever deepening trust in God and we must utilize every means at our disposal to develop and maintain a devotional prayer life.
Thomas Keating, a Cistercian monk, wrote, "The Christian spiritual path is based on a deepening trust in God. It is trust that first allows us to take that initial leap in the dark, to encounter God at deeper levels of ourselves. And it is trust that guides the intimate refashioning of our being, the transformation of our pain, woundedness, and unconscious motivation into the person that God intended us to be."
EVALUATION
The continual process of personal evaluation and reflection serves at least a dual purpose in our lives.
First, it helps us see the landmarks and milestones between where we began our journey in days past and where we are in our journey in times present. This helps us avoid viewing ourselves solely in a negative light. Reviewing our personal landmarks and milestones enables us to recall and review our spiritual growth progress with a present realism.
Second, it helps us to see the shortcomings and inadequacies yet present in our lives and keeps us from elevating and exalting ourselves above our fellows. The Apostle Paul, one of the most able and utilized of the Apostles of the first century, realized the essential necessity of humility. Though incredibly credentialed, Paul refused to place inordinate confidence in himself. He lived his life en route to the goal and prize that awaited him at the end of his spiritual journey. (Philippians 3). Our attitude as modern believers should be no less than the historical one exhibited by him.
Self evaluation is the on going process of being honest with ourselves where we learn to embrace both our weaknesses and our strengths without allowing either the privilege of hobbling or hampering our spiritual growth.
Coping is more than an abject acceptance of difficulty or challenge. Coping is a positive process of growing through seasons of trial and tribulation. Whether the seasons are self imposed or brought on by other people or exterior circumstances, incorporating the steps of commitment, organization, prayer, and evaluation into our lives provides and equips us with tools that insure spiritual growth and productivity. As we cope, as our spiritual life takes on fresh purpose and meaning, the rest of life unfolds around us much like the petals of a flower attached to the stem that provides its sustenance.
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