yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of a life-altering moment at a young life youth retreat on a cold december night spent sitting on a rock at the laurelville mennonite church camp. that was the moment i had my evangelical "born again" experience. nothing in my life has been the same since. i've been thinking about things i thought i thought then & think i think now. here's just a few things i've come to believe:
1. while i do not doubt the important role it played in my life, i don't think that kind of born again experience is necessary for salvation. it is important that we decide to own our faith, to make it ours, but i don't think the particular experience of "asking Jesus into my heart" is the only way to do that. salvation is ultimately a gift of God--"it is by grace that we are saved". grace is completely free, utterly unearned, recklessly lavished upon us by our Father, through the work of Jesus. to say that it depends on me asking Jesus to come into my heart puts the onus on me & it gets salvation backwards. it's not Jesus being invited into my life, it's me being invited into the life of the Trinity. it's this understanding that has made me come full circle in my thinking & understanding to re-value my baptism as an infant. granted this is a subject for an entire posting of it's own, infant baptism is the perfect picture of salvation by grace. freely poured out upon someone so obviously incapable of doing anything to deserve or earn it. that faith must be nurtured & if done right will naturally (or supernaturally?) lead to acceptance & ownership of that faith.
2. community is extremely important, even inseparable from our faith. that community is best found in small groups of people committed to experiencing the life of God. those small groups can be found in larger, traditional churches or in smaller, simple home churches. the important thing is that there is love of God & each other, honesty, trust, openness, and shared vision. how worship is done, where it takes place are secondary to this community of the heart & can even overcome apathy and routines of others in the larger body of Christ. going it alone is never an option for a follower of Jesus. this is one concept that hasn't changed in 20 years.
3. God's will if for each of us to be faithful, loving & whole. the job we get, the person we marry, the car we drive, the home we buy are all the context for his will to be experienced, but he doesn't have a perfect job, wife, car, home for us. discovering those are part of what it means to be free. we can drive ourselves crazy--i know i have-- looking for purpose & meaning for our lives through creation when what really matters most is finding our identity in the Creator. callings do not always translate to careers. i can be called to be a pastor & fulfill that destiny without ever being on a church payroll. his callings & gifts are intended for us to use in the context of everyday life. the highest way for me to show faithfulness to his will is to stay faithful to him and to selflessly love my wife & children. if i can succeed in those simple things i have done much with my life.
4. sin isn't as much of a problem as self. sin is simply the result of letting self have control, letting self feed it's hunger. the goal of discipleship in the here & now is to conquer the self and not get sidetracked by focusing on individual sins. this is the new testament's dirty little secret. "he must increase, i must decrease." "take up your cross & deny yourself." "it is no longer i that live but Christ that lives in me." the problem isn't sin, it's me. if i could just stop being so self-focused, self-absorbed, self-loving i would be in much better shape & so would those around me. the real meaning of humility isn't having a proper view of myself, it's having no view of myself at all.
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1 comment:
Excellent testimony. Rings true to me.
""" to say that it depends on me asking Jesus to come into my heart puts the onus on me & it gets salvation backwards. it's not Jesus being invited into my life, it's me being invited into the life of the Trinity."""
This is a deeper issue. That you were predestinated by the Father, and for the pleasure of the Son ... you were fashioned in such a way to be willing.
Those fashioned to be willing to have a Shepherd and to be willing to be Shepherded by the Lord Jesus are wheaty "seeds." "Tares" or "weeds" are others who were fashioned differently. They are unwilling goats, independent, self-sufficient, unwilling to be otherwise.
Jesus can tell (though it is invisible to us) which is which. He hasn't let us in on it yet, and some are quite confused, but the Lord knows each of the souls that are entrusted to Him. The Lord Jesus is faithful to each of them seeing that each of these immortal souls come to repentance, and the Lord Jesus won't miss a single one.
It is better for every man to repent, but not every man does. However, for each that does repent, they do not deserve a special reward as if they are just smart enough to figure out the gospel, while others are not. Rather that repentence does not change them to be predestinated, it reveals that the Father sowed them into the world, ALREADY willing, and then sent the Son to see to-it, that you came to receive this grace - the grace of the Holy Spirit infused into their being.
It is all miraculous. Miraculous that we are called. Miraculous that we are willing to come. Miraculous that we are enabled to rise above through the Eternal Life. We DID say yes to the call, but even that is a miracle. The Father made us willing, we did not make ourselves willing. To God be all the glory!
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