Lord Change my Attitude
This past weekend was that time of the month that I have come to dread. Yes...the drill weekend with the Army. Going into this weekend I had a lot of frustration and anger that really just led to me having a crumby attitude about the weekend. I let that attitude affect me so much that it showed in how I was treating people on Thursday the day before drill.
The Thursday morning before things got really hectic, we had a staff meeting at Christian Challenge and Julie, the director of CC, prayed that I would be able to not let the emotions and thoughts I had about the Army affect my relationships with the people I would interact with during the weekend. That really stuck with me through the weekend, and at 8am Friday morning I could really tell that I was stinking it up with my attitude and not focusing or recognizing the opportunities I had to build relationships with the soldiers in my unit. So I began to pray that same prayer Julie had voiced earlier, I prayed that God would open my eyes to the opportunities to ministry by investing myself in the lives of those around me. That I would be ready to engage people where they were and if they were ready to present the truth of Jesus Christ and the gospel to them.
Spiritual Blindness
Because I am in the Army Reserve
, I don't see most of the soldiers except for the one drill weekend a month. So a lot of the preliminary conversation revolves around catching up. We just try to find out how things have been and what's new. So a lot of the questions that come to me are about what I do. All of the soldiers in my unit have the vague idea that I'm in some type of religious training and work. However, all the soldiers I talk to and really, most people, don't really have a firm grasp of what it means to be in any kind of ministry. The popular questions or answers I get about what people think I do is, “So how long before you become a priest?” or “So when you become a priest what are gonna do?” My responses to these questions inevitably lead to conversations about experiences that I have in ministry describing some of the opportunities God has allowed me to be part of in transforming lives.
, I don't see most of the soldiers except for the one drill weekend a month. So a lot of the preliminary conversation revolves around catching up. We just try to find out how things have been and what's new. So a lot of the questions that come to me are about what I do. All of the soldiers in my unit have the vague idea that I'm in some type of religious training and work. However, all the soldiers I talk to and really, most people, don't really have a firm grasp of what it means to be in any kind of ministry. The popular questions or answers I get about what people think I do is, “So how long before you become a priest?” or “So when you become a priest what are gonna do?” My responses to these questions inevitably lead to conversations about experiences that I have in ministry describing some of the opportunities God has allowed me to be part of in transforming lives. The next step in this sequence of conversation usually ends with one of the soldiers qualifying what I tell them with either/both an admission of guilt or wrong doing that they know needs to be corrected followed by a commendation of what I have chosen to do with my life. People will say,
“That's great that you are doing what you're doing. You're actually doing something for humanity, I know it’s a great feeling you get to help someone. That must be why you do it. And in the end when we all show up in front of the Big Guy, you will be way ahead of most of us because you'll be able to point to all the good things you've done to let you into heaven.”
Skewed Perception of God's Identity
At this point in the conversation, I usually pretty distraught, because I know what I want to tell them about all of that. I know that what they are saying is a false perception of God's identity based off of the lies that have been circulated by the Enemy in our culture. A true blindness to what is truly spiritual because of false sense of spiritual and religious security that has been woven into the cultural and political fabric of American society.
Everyone thinks that America is a Christian nation, and that everyone that is morally upright or ethically sound gets to go to heaven. People see God as a distant moral judge who has no bearing on how we live now. Others might even go so far as to say that everyone goes to heaven and that everyone gets a second chance to even the score between things they've done wrong with things they can do right so that they can go to heaven. The God that they picture is a god without love. god isn't a personal god or even a god that is necessarily real. The kind of picture people paint of god is one that essentially reduces Him into a computer program that weighs the good against the bad in a person life then sends the person to heaven or hell. An impersonal non conscientious entity of justice. Non sentient.
The other group of people that might think everyone goes to heaven or will eventually go to heaven have reduced god to some distant figure of authority that simply babysits people until they can evolve to a point where they have more good in them than bad. An impersonal god that doesn't interact in the lives of people.
God of the Bible
This god that people picture is not the God of the Bible. The impersonal and distant god is not the God revealed in Scripture. Because my God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a God of relationships. God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, He is a God of love.
Jeremiah 31:3
Long ago the Lord said to Israel:
“I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love.
With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself. [1]
The Bible, the Word of God, is one continuing narrative of God the Holy One and His love for us as He continues to pursue His Holiness. God throughout history is always shown as the initiator of relationships. From the Adam and Eve till now, God has not changed, he initiated and drew Adam and Even into fellowship with Himself, today He is doing the same with each of us. We see the truth of this in John 3:16-17.
For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. [2]
God loves us and sent Jesus Christ, our redeemer, to buy us from the grip of sin and death. God didn't send Jesus to be a simple automaton that doesn’t interact with people in a meaningful way. God chose to reveal who He is through relationships throughout the Old Testament in lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and many more. God continues to reveal himself to us in His Son Jesus Christ.
Colossians 1:19-22
For God in all his fullness
was pleased to live in Christ,
20 and through him God reconciled
everything to himself.
He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth
by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.
21 This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 22 Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. [3]
This passage illustrates the amazing grace God shows us in choosing to love us and desiring to enter into a reconciliatory relationship with us. The God revealed in Scripture is not the god proclaimed in American culture. This God is a living God whose relationship with us has true meaning and relevance to how we live today.
The God that sent Jesus into the world to begin the process of transformation in our lives, and all creation so that all things might be restored to Him, is a personal God that desires to enter into relationship with us so that He might transform us. Transformation doesn’t occur with a simple wave of the hand or knowledge dump. Transformation is a painstaking process that requires intimacy developed over time.
Personal Implications
Reflecting on all this has re-emphasized the need for me to treat those who have not yet become followers of Jesus in a new way. Transformation doesn’t occur by me simply telling those who are spiritually blind that if they follow Jesus they will see. That’s like giving cardinal directions to a blind person and expecting them to find their way to their destination. That’s not loving nor is it responsible. I need to be reminded that the one that transforms lives is Jesus. Just as I recognize the grace God has shown me and the patience that He has in transforming my life, I need to remember that the same is true of other people. It’s gonna take time, time for them to be transformed. Even before then, time to come to a place where they encounter Jesus. So rather than just telling a spiritually blind person to follow Jesus, I must stay with the person guiding them to the Healer who will give them sight.
Dennis Pethers
, the author of the More to Life: Engaging through Story
study, brings up this idea of pre-discipleship. The process of taking one who is lost and bringing them to the One seeks them. Entering into a relationship with a lost person before they come to Jesus and acting as guide in their spiritual Journey with Jesus. Dennis gets this idea of pre-discipleship from the life of Jesus and his relationship with his disciples. Jesus entered into relationship with each of his disciples before they truly came to believe in Him. Jesus lived life with His disciples guiding them through life until they came to a place where they know and believe in Jesus.
, the author of the More to Life: Engaging through Story study, brings up this idea of pre-discipleship. The process of taking one who is lost and bringing them to the One seeks them. Entering into a relationship with a lost person before they come to Jesus and acting as guide in their spiritual Journey with Jesus. Dennis gets this idea of pre-discipleship from the life of Jesus and his relationship with his disciples. Jesus entered into relationship with each of his disciples before they truly came to believe in Him. Jesus lived life with His disciples guiding them through life until they came to a place where they know and believe in Jesus.Mark 8:27-39
Jesus and his disciples left Galilee and went up to the villages near Caesarea Philippi. As they were walking along, he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”
28 “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say you are one of the other prophets.”
29 Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?”
[1] Tyndale House Publishers, Holy Bible : New Living Translation., 3rd ed. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2007), Je 31:3.
[2] Tyndale House Publishers, Holy Bible : New Living Translation., 3rd ed. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2007), Jn 3:16–17.
[3] Tyndale House Publishers, Holy Bible : New Living Translation., 3rd ed. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2007), Col 1:19–22.
* 8:29 Or the Christ. Messiah (a Hebrew term) and Christ (a Greek term) both mean “the anointed one.”
[4] Tyndale House Publishers, Holy Bible : New Living Translation., 3rd ed. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2007), Mk 8:27–29.
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