"Anyone who claims to be intimate with God ought to live the same kind of life Jesus lived."
That's in 1 John 2:4-6 in The Message.
I don't know if you've ever read about the kind of life Jesus lived, but I'm telling you the truth when I say the first time I read about the kind of life Jesus lived for myself, it changed the entire trajectory of my life.
I was already a Christian when this happened. I'd been a Christian for most of my life. I learned about Jesus as a child, fell in love with him before I could explain what love was, and yet as much as I had been in church, in Sunday school, and raised in a God-following home, I did not KNOW what the bible said about the kind of life Jesus lived.
After graduating from a Christian high school, I attended bible college. That was when I picked up my bible and started in the gospel of Matthew. Devouring. By the time I got through the gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans, I had come to some awful conclusions.
Jesus was all things radical.
I was not.
I remember going out for coffee with someone I knew from bible school, and being asked "So... what are you learning?"
I said "I'm not learning this in school, but I'm learning that everything I thought about Christianity is not true Christianity... it's just religion."
That conversation was the start of a major life change for me. A Damascus road experience, if you will. The eyes of my understanding were being opened and I was realizing that religion does not equal salvation. That church is not The Church. That what we "do" in America to worship God is not the worship he calls for from his children. That what we'd always done as Christians was not what the bible described for the New Covenant believer... it actually looked an awful lot more like what the religious leaders did whom Jesus fought against constantly. And most of all... that the Jesus I'd learned in church was not the Jesus of holy writ.
And I loved the Jesus of holy writ!
At this time I was an extremely sheltered, naive, good little Christian 18 year old girl. Far away from home. Searching for the answers to questions I didn't even know I'd have.
I left home planning to go to bible school for a year or two, and then to missionary training school, and then into the foreign mission field. I had a calling, a plan. It was a good plan, of course, because it was ministry, right? But it was my plan.
Sometimes, oftentimes... dare I say all the time, God has a different plan for our lives than we do.
"Anyone who claims to be intimate with God ought to live the same kind of life Jesus lived."
So... what kind of life did he live?
He was obedient to the point of sacrifice.
He was self-less.
He was faith-full.
He was passionate.
He was full of joy!
He was radically different.
He was wise.
He was love.
Listen. I can barely make the claim of being intimate with God. I want to be. I beg to be. I know I am his child and he created me in his image. I know I bear a portion of his glory and he wants to live in relationship with me. He wants to be my friend. He knows me more completely than I even know myself. He loves me. Some days I despair of ever being as close to God as my heart longs to be.
But this I know - Jesus was a man, just like us. Because of the sacrifice he made to put aside his rights as God and become a man, to die for me, I CAN live in intimacy with him. Forever. It's what he wants! It's what he created me for, what he came to earth to purchase my freedom for, it's what eternity is for! With that in mind, can I live the same kind of life he lived while I'm living this life? Can I be self-less, obedient, faithful, passionate, full of joy, radically different, characterized by wisdom and most of all love?
That right there is true ministry. Not my will, but Yours be done.
1 comment:
Very powerful, Hilary. Thank you for sharing.
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