Crunch and Crumble

If you’re a grade school boy, the best thing about cicadas is their abandoned exoskeletons.  A kid can find dozens of them attached to trees.  In the days before plastic action heroes, you could collect a pile of these, and make them “fight” each other until they finally crumbled.    

And they did, easily.  The cicada itself is a thick, incredibly tough bug, but its shell is a brittle husk.  

Without an emphasis on internal spiritual life, likewise, a believer is left with nothing but his or her shell.  Such skin-deep strength can’t withstand much.  It relies on favorable outward circumstances.  It can only tolerate answers to prayer that go our way.

In fact, the Christian life becomes downright difficult.  The calls of Scripture unto a holy life feel unreasonable. Even basic things like forgiveness, purity of heart, contentment, and thankfulness, are considered radical when we neglect our inner life.  We would sooner argue with them than obey.   

Perhaps most distressing of all, the divine glory of God’s self-revelation, in Scripture, seems a distant planet that has little or no beauty to the beholder. It is an indistinguishable blob of luminescence far away.  At best, we offer it a mildly interested nod, as if viewing it through a telescope. 

That’s why Paul describes his prayer for you and me, “to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (Ephesians 3:16). Otherwise, we will become weak-spirited, and fatally dependent on our outer being.

And in this world, it won’t be long until the crunch and crumble comes.  Owing to the scarcity of our mortal resources, we’re no outwardly tougher than the cicada shell. 

True, God eternally guards our position in his Son.  But it is within our purview to guard the quality of our fellowship with Him by using all the provisions of grace He has made available to us – His blood, His word, His Spirit, and the fellowship of the church. 

Our starting point is from within, where a superior, resistant life takes shape.  As John would say, “he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

This is an updated edition of a post originally published on John Myer

Featured Image by Murphy Chen from Pixabay

About the Author

John Myer is an evangelical Christian who likes to think as well as pray. Though he loves to write, his passion also has a live outlet. He planted and currently pastors a church, Grandview Christian Assembly, in the greater Columbus, Ohio area. He is a dad, a husband, and an expatriated southern man living up north. And by the way, he has a Master’s Degree in Theological Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

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