Life Project Blog

It isn’t always that hard, either.  Oh, but I haven’t said what “it” is yet, have I?  Sorry. “It” is following Jesus.

In recent posts, I have spoken about guilt, shame, form, tradition and following Jesus.  A quick reading of those posts might seem as though it’s all so easy, maybe too easy.  Isn’t that how Christianity is often portrayed?  Someone comes along who is seeking.  We share the gospel, and we tell the person that all they have to do is X, Y and Z, and them everything is great.  They are excited, all their problems are over, so they do X, Y and Z.

In reality it isn’t quite that easy, is it?  The people are happy, excited; thrilled really.  After a few Sundays you don’t see them any more… What went wrong?

Maybe they didn’t really believe.  Maybe they faked the whole thing.  Maybe they moved to Ohio.  Maybe we misrepresented what it is to follow Jesus Christ by reducing it all down to X, Y and Z!  This would be the “form” part.  Becoming a follower of Jesus is not form, it’s substance. This substance is truth, reality and life.  It comes not from long-held traditions of worship, it comes from the person of Jesus Christ.  It doesn’t come from avoiding a list of no no’s, it comes from seeking Him.

Someone tell me: How will a new Christian know this if nobody is willing to show him or her the way forward?  What about a long time Christian who might have stuck around, but never came to understand what following is?  How will they ever know if nobody will take the time and effort to help them out? What about your brother or sister who is consumed with guilt, shame or baggage from their past who is living a life of pain and hurt; how are they to be healed if we avoid them?

This is the “reaching out” part of following.

The reaching out part of the Christian experience isn’t always comfortable, but it also isn’t that difficult.  It is where the joy is.  It is the part that changes lives, it is the part where we grow and grow in our faith, and that makes everything easier, if not always entirely comfortable.

I have a theory that I’d like to explore, yet I’m not sure that I can explain it as clearly as I’d like, but here goes: Christian theology is not particularly difficult to understand.  Its precepts and premises are fairly simple, it was given to “regular” guys to share with the world, and they did it.  Yes, of course they had a lot of help from the Holy Spirit, but then so do we. Yet we love to argue, follow tradition and form to avoid spiritual growth and reaching out, because they are counter-intuitive, and the fact that they are counter-intuitive is exactly the point of all things being new, for our human intuition isn’t new, it’s the old thing that Jesus died to free us from.

Hopefully, I can explain this more clearly in future posts.  In the meantime, I apologize for my inadequacies as a communicator, and hope that you, dear reader, will ponder these things.

“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”

Romans 1:16

Are you ashamed of the Gospel?  Of course not!  How about at work, at the store or at the diner?

The Gospel is the power of God for the salvation of the world.  That makes it about the most powerful force in the universe.  The power of the Gospel can move mountains… and it can change lives; it is powerful indeed.  As Christ’s ambassador, it is the most powerful force in your arsenal, and is one that we all must respect and be bold enough to bring up.  Here’s another way of looking at it: Do you love people?  Do you care about your neighbor; would you help him or her out if they had a problem?  If so, how can we let them die without hearing the Gospel from someone they know and trust?

Just think, God put you where you are and gave you the glorious message of power; the Gospel.  Can we keep it to ourselves?

Guilt.  What a force for destruction! Every single person who reads this has sinned, the person who is writing it has too.  The question for today’s reflection is this: Do we torture ourselves with guilt over our sin, or are we forgiven?

I don’t know why, but I often run into people who are Christians and who have a terrible time getting past feelings of guilt for their sins, even to the point of questioning their faith.  Every time I hear this, I am surprised by it for some reason!  Why would a Christian be filled with guilt over their forgiven sins?  Didn’t Jesus give His life on the cross to set us free from all that?  Yet within Christianity there are some who teach in a way that centers on guilt. I do not question the faith of these people, nor do I criticize their motives, for they are repeating what they have been taught.  I guess all I can really say is that I grieve for them, because this is so hurtful and damaging to those they teach.

A Christian has already been forgiven for their sins, even the ones they haven’t quite committed yet.  God knows our weaknesses, but He loves us anyway: This is simply a fact. Yes, we all mess up sometimes, but God has taken that into account:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:9

If we believe the Word of God… no, let’s say it this way: If we believe God, then when we come to Him and confess our sins, He forgives them. Period.  So why the guilt?  We are forgiven, the slate is clean, we have been justified by our faith.  End of subject. Wouldn’t we be more appropriate if we responded with thanksgiving and praise, rather than with guilt? After that, our response might be to serve Him with joy and gladness for all that He has done for us.

May we all ponder and reflect on these things, and pray for our brothers and sisters who find them hard to cope with, asking the Lord to open their eyes to the reality of all that He has done for His children.

With Christmas past and the new year looming, all of us have the opportunity to make a new start.  Most of us have areas of our lives that we aren’t entirely satisfied with, why keep doing the same things?

I’m not really talking about the traditional “New Year’s Resolutions” here, because as most of us have discovered, they really don’t work all that well.  I think the reason for that is that they are an attempt to deal with a symptom of something, rather than dealing with the underlying problem.

Now I guess that is a big statement to make; what ‘underlying problem’?

Here’s a theory:  Most of us have a problem with focus.  Here’s what I mean:

Are you focused on good things?  Are you focused on others, on your relationships, family, job…?  Are you focused on your relationship with Jesus?

You see, most of us are focused on a lot of things at once; so many in fact, that we really aren’t focused on anything.  ‘Focus” tends to be exclusionary, that is to say, that if we are focused on one thing, the others slip…

There’s one exception to this rule; our focus on our relationship with Jesus Christ.  If we are focused on our relationship with Jesus Christ, the other necessary areas of focus will not slip, but rather we will be motivated to do all of them better.  If we focus on our relationship with Christ, our relationships with other people will improve, our job performance will improve, and our entire outlook on life will improve.  The only area of focus that will slip is in being focused on self… that will begin to wither, and maybe that’s the part that will allow us to live a better life.

I don’t know about you, but my strategy for being a better human being in the new year will be to focus on Jesus!