believer – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

I imagine myself trying to distill to a single phrase the one driving force meant to mark the life of every Christian believer. While surveying this, I picture a gathering of people. I am present and Jesus is speaking to us all. He is giving his own answer to the very question (what most marks the disciples’ motivation, his drive, in living life?).

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. . . .and you shall love your neighbor as yourself”

Love.

God Is Love, the sacred text reads.

The earliest followers of Jesus were utterly taken by the love of God, witnessed nonstop through the sheer volume of words and actions issuing from his Son. They saw it in him. . . saw it demonstrated through him. . . love, at every turn.

When he pardoned and blessed the woman that was dragged into the public square, shamed and condemned by her accusers. And the other instances.

Stretching out a hand, bringing healing to a leper (the untouchables, the shunned of their day). Conferring dignity and high worth on little kids (the unsophisticated and marginally noticed). Assigning honor, even friendship, to a diminutive, tree-scaling government scoundrel.

Small wonder that the Westminster Shorter Catechism answers as it does the question, “What is the chief end of man?”

Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

I quiz myself. Have I ever met such a person who carries out that pair of assignments well – consistently, virtuously? Other than the itinerant Nazarene preacher, human embodiment of the divine?

As with Jesus, so with us. Agape alone supplies fuel for knowing God and for extolling him as beautiful and transcendent Being of the cosmos and beyond. Day in and glorious day out.

Little surprise the tentmaking apostle’s analysis. . . the greatest of all that remains is love. Surely, indeed – given the savior’s gasping prayer over his executioners,

“Father, forgive.”

The membrane-cloaked calf lay still from exhaustion on the dew-soaked Bermuda grass. The little bull had, the past few seconds with the gallant aid of his mama, thrust his way outward from her womb and into Autumn’s sharp early-morning air.

Wanting to grow to be like Jesus comes naturally for any born-anew believer. It is as natural a thing as conception – gestation – birthing and maturing are natural to reproductive life.

The progression, in fact, sounds normal. That is because it is normal. The thing that does not come naturally (automatically) for the believer, though, is the actual doing it. . . becoming like Jesus. At least not for a good while. Not for most.

Transformation to Christlikeness, however, is not unrealistic. Nor is it such a hard thing to make headway in. The issue that makes growing into the likeness of Jesus most difficult is likely our simple lack of know-how. This had been true for me, no question. I wanted change like crazy. Make me like you, Jesus. I just didn’t know how to start getting there.

Reflective musings

So, moving from being a ‘not-much-like-Jesus’ person to becoming very much like him. Are there ways to go about this, ways to understand how? Can there be things, we press the matter further, “hands-on, practical things – I could learn to do? Could do together with Him, leading me to pleasurable rhythms of Christ’s joy, his love, service, character and life. . . For real? That I could grow to live in that curious easy yoke he seemed to matter-of-factly invite us to?”

Easy yoke? The easy had eluded me. And for quite a long time. How could I start, where to begin?

The birthing language helps me get a handle on something.

“Oh, my dear children!” Paul writes. “I feel as if I’m going through labor pains for you again, and they will continue until Christ is fully developed in your lives” (Galatians 4.19 NLT)

The fellow credited for writing much of the New Testament uses here the birthing metaphor to help us catch the idea of God’s means of bringing the change we yearn after. We catch a feeling too for how passionately the Holy Spirit wishes this for us. Labor pains. We can’t help getting the feeling he really means it. Christ – radically developing us, reproducing his nature and character within our lives. Freely. Easily. . . Remarkable.

For a good while – decades actually – I struggled over this thing. A discussion, mostly silent, went on in my head and my heart.

Once a person is saved, brought to faith in Christ, a new beginning has launched, right.

The believer isn’t born into the family of faith to stay an infant. We are born to develop, to grow in the faith, to mature, be transformed. We are to get better at being a Christian. This is what he is saying, what he is after.

Every child of God, every one of us, is handed the oxygen-charged assignment. To change. And, what is more, sliding our neck into an easy yoke with Jesus us sounds more like an invitation to dance than to trudge forward under a burdensome, ever-crushing load. What if Jesus is approaching. Offering his hand, extending a question.

May I have this dance?

Tag: believer

One Driving Force

Invitation