Cheerleader

 When did we relegate God to the cheerleader position in our lives? Was it when we realized that Him being Lord of all meant we needed to crucify the flesh? Was it when what He required of His own interfered with what the flesh wanted? Or was it when we realized that His being on the throne meant we couldn’t be?

It’s a good question to ponder since that’s the duty many modern-day Christians have assigned to Him. When you think about it, the cheerleader’s role is irrelevant save for the fact that once in a while, they scream, ‘you can do it!’ but as far as having the ability to affect the outcome, there is none.

A cheerleader’s function is to cheer. Whether you’re doing horribly or marginally well, their sole purpose is to infuse you with a sense of exuberance, regardless of whether or not you have the requisite skill to defeat your opponent. Once you’re on the ground choking on your own teeth and wondering where you are, the cheerleader stops cheering, her purpose having reached its rightful end. The cheerleader did the job; the cheerleader cheered. What good did it do you in the heat of battle? None!

It should be evident that when we relegate God to the cheerleader role in our lives, we are diminishing Him, cheapening who He is, and underplaying what He can do. It’s like having the best coach in the history of coaching in your corner, and you confine him to janitorial duty, maybe clearing some messes you made when it gets too messy for you to contend with. You know what I’m talking about. There’s always one or two every other morning that insists they need a miracle because they managed to annihilate their lives so thoroughly by the choices they’ve made that only God could fix it.

Cheer me on even when I’m doing wrong, and when the wrong I’m doing gets to the point that it’s choking out everything in my life, lend a hand, and pull me out.

As I thought more about this, I realized that when you relegate God to the position of cheerleader, you also cut off His ability to command you, tell you what you must do, and give you instructions as to how you should proceed. He is no longer God at that point, at least not over your life, and you can do as you please. At that point, your only expectation is that He stands on the sideline and jumps up and down, giddy at the prospect of you finishing what you started even if you come in dead last.

I know; your god doesn’t judge. Coincidentally neither does the devil. Don’t get it twisted. He’ll shame you to the ends of the earth, and you’ll never go anywhere in public again without strangers whispering your name, shaking their heads, and pointing at you, but he doesn’t judge.

All those people clamoring to sell you an impotent god who’s good at nothing more than cheering you on excitedly as you first flirt with darkness and eventually get swallowed whole by it aren’t doing you any favors. They’re selling you a Yugo, knowing it’s Yugo, but trying to pass it off as a Ferrari, hoping your offering check clears before you tell the difference. The thing you thought would be the answer turned out to be cancer, and it’s eating away methodically until nothing but some skin and bones remain.

You did this one thing, and your god remained silent, then this other, and still more silence, then again, and again, and the silence stretched into the abyss you descended into.

Psalm 50:15, “Call upon me in your day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.”

The God of the Bible is not a cheerleader. He is a present help in times of trouble. Call on Him, and He will deliver you, but for you to call on Him, you must first know Him. Not as contemporary Christianity has made Him out to be, but as He is, as He self-identifies in the Book, as He is known from generation to generation, from the beginning of all things to the end.

If you know Him, the real Him, when you call upon Him in your day of trouble, He will deliver you. He doesn’t say He’ll try or do His best; it is a certainty as immutable as the sun in the sky. He will deliver you, and you will glorify Him, but He can only be glorified in spirit and truth from a pure heart and a contrite spirit.

He is glorified and will be forevermore not for what men hope He’ll do for them but for what He has already done and what He has promised to do.

God doesn’t deal in half-measures. Anyone who insists He does is lying to your face. Any day now, the fence sitters will run out of fence, and they will have to choose between serving their flesh or the One True God.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.