Restricted or Restrained?

Have you ever been in a situation where your blood is boiling, your collar gets tight (if you have a collar) and you are just ready to jump off the edge and tell someone a piece of your mind or poke your fist through their face? Well, you just might have been or is coming out of one or even about to face such an encounter.

In the summer of 2006, while serving as a student colporteur, selling Christian literature, in the United States, New York, in particular, I was riding the “D” train heading for Brooklyn out of the Bronx. I was heading for an evangelistic meeting that was happening at the last stop, Coney Island. I settled in for the long ride and the numerous stops with a brochure to read and earphones connected to my Discman. As I got lost in the reading the train pulled into a station and new passengers filtered in. I so happened to observe a gentleman dressed in a nice suit who walked through the isle of train unaided by the poles or rails provided. His bruised wrist and grimacing face were a betrayal of his sharp attire—the sight of him wrested my attention.

There was something that made me wary of his behaviour. The Holy Spirit, I believe impressed me to pray for God’s protection and I immediately bowed my head, whispered a prayer of Divine covering. As my eyes opened, my view of those sitting across from me was blocked by the hovering torso of this strange looking gentleman, who was staring down my face. He immediately grabbed the paper I was reading out of my hand and started to threaten to spit on me. I quickly pulled the earplugs from my ears and started paying greater attention to what was unfolding right in my personal space on a train with at least fifteen to twenty other person.

The question was: “Why Me?” I became very upset and was tempted to really get into a kickboxing mode, but then I remembered that I had just prayed for God’s protection, so I calmly asked him to return the brochure, which he did. After this very tense moment, he walked away, because the trained had stopped to pick up more passengers. I, however, excited because I never wanted another encounter with him. Within that moment of grinding emotions and sweaty brows, I could have really lost my cool but I felt restrained by the hand of God to subdue my anger and the temptation to physically respond to this seemingly possessed man. You see, I exercised restraint, but it never meant that I was restricted. According to Dictionary.com, these two words are defined as follows: Restraint: the act of restraining, holding back, controlling, or checking and restricted: confined; limited. In that moment of high pressure, I was certainly not restricted because I had all the means to defend my personal space and throw a punch, however, I was restrained by my confidence that I had prayed in the prayer earlier for God to protect me.

The Christian is not restricted in what he or she wants to do, whether in a similar situation as mine, a moment of temptation, of any kind or when someone even betrays us. However, God calls on the Christians to have restraint under all circumstances. Paul in Ephesians 2:26 says: “Be ye angry, and sin not”, which tells me immediately that, it is appropriate to be angry. However, we ought to have the level of restraint that will determine to what extent the ire of our emotions take us. While I am no Physicist there is a popular law in physics that says: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” “According to [Isaac]Newton, whenever objects A and B interact with each other, they exert forces upon each other. When you sit in your chair, your body exerts a downward force on the chair and the chair exerts an upward force on your body. There are two forces resulting from this interaction – a force on the chair and a force on your body. These two forces are called action and reaction forces and are the subject of Newton’s third law of motion.”[1] There is great spiritual verity in this physical law. In a moment when someone creates some friction in your life or “pushes your button” while the law of physics is very much real, your response can be to hit back or respond with the same force and intent.

However, I have learned, that we ought not to always to treat people the way they treat us because then we become who they are and not who we are supposed to be. For the Christian, the Bible says: “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18). In 2 Chronicles 20:15 God, through his prophet, comforted a worried King, Jehoshaphat, not to be perturbed by the imminence of war with these words: “the battle is not yours, but God’s”. That’s a promise to keep in mind at every test—God is in control and if we have that confidence in Him, we will not have to fight our own battles. In the moments when life seems to be slipping away from us or a temptation is so overwhelming and we feel like giving into the tsunami of pressure, God is calling us to trust His power. Regardless of the pressure Paul notes: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). There is a force that is constantly agitating us to react in an unrestrained fashion, but we must never surrender to its pressure.

I am not naïve to the fact that we are free to do whatever we want to do because God has not restricted from doing wrong—we have the freedom of choice. A classic Biblical example of this tug-o-war is with David, the Bible in the book of 2 Samuels 11 tells a story of a powerful king who should have been at war, yet he was pacing the corridors of his roof top balcony when his eye caught a scene that would test his restraint. It was Bathsheba, a beautiful specimen of a woman, having her shower in clear view of the ‘idle’ king. David had unrestricted power to summon any woman of the kingdom to come to him, and even though this was another man’s wife he failed to restrain his infatuations and not sin against the God of heaven. What drama unfolded after this moment of selfish indulgence by the former shepherd boy and giant-slayer? He conspired the killing of Uriah and eventually, Bathsheba became his wife, not without some divine retribution, where the child died in infancy (see 2 Samuels 14:15-18).  Most times when we come out of moments of unrestraint, we usually walk away with tremendous regrets and bruises that scar our souls and experience for a lifetime.

Whatever your test might be today, God is calling you to have restraint. The consequences of allowing our unrestricted natures to overtake our reason are limitless, but God is on our side and we need only to surrender to his protection and Divine intervention. The heat under our collar must not determine the temperature of our responses, but we must be tamed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

[1] ‘Newton’s Third Law’ The Physics Classroom, Accessed August 21, 2017: http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/newtlaws/Lesson-4/Newton-s-Third-Law