Obedience

The Christian Walk in a Nutshell

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Here is the classic conundrum that has boggled the church in the last fifty years or so.

The charismatics say, “Well, the Holy Spirit says….”

The doctrinarians say, “Well, the Bible says….”

The neo-“Jesus People” say, “Well, Jesus did….”

Here’s the only truth: They all reinforce each other. You can’t have one without the others.

Tongues of Fire at PentecostYou want the Christian walk in a nutshell? Here it is: Those who love the Lord Jesus and serve Him alone are led by His Spirit to speak the Truth of the Scriptures while reaching out to other people like He did. That’s it. Doesn’t seem too hard, does it? Here’s all we need to understand as disciples of the Lord Jesus: We must love and serve the Lord alone:

It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. —Deuteronomy 6:13

And 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. —Mark 12:30

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” —John 14:21

We must know Jesus and know His voice:

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. —John 17:3

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. —John 10:27

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. —Romans 8:14

We must know the Scriptures:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. —Colossians 3:16

And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. —Acts 4:31

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. —2 Timothy 3:16-17

We must get out there and reach people:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” —Matthew 28:18-20

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ —Matthew 25:34-40

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. —John 14:12

That’s it—the Christian walk in a nutshell. Now what’s it going to take for us to live it?

The Google Persecution

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A few years ago, I sat in a job interview awaiting a response from a somber-looking man who had just gotten a first-class pitch from yours truly. He tugged off his glasses, looked me straight in the eye, and told me he thought I had all the skills to be a terrific employee. Then, settling in his seat, he added, “But I don’t need another Billy Graham on my hands.”

Why this remark? Why the curt answer? He’d noted that my résumé revealed my college major as “Christian Education.”

I once had a Christian career consultant warn me that unless I changed my major to simply read “Education,” I would find work hard to come by. When I told her that this would be lying, seeing that my college had an Education department distinct from the Christian Ed department, she said, “It’s okay. Everyone does it a little bit.

I write this post with some trepidation. Even pointing this out carries with it some risk. It may be silly to some, but I believe that Christians who have an Internet presence need to be aware that we are being watched. What we write online is being duly noted.

With “Google Me!” becoming a part of the millennium’s lexicon, it is easy for anyone out there to find considerable information on anyone. Couple this with the pressure of conformity to the world, and Christians who regularly write online, have a blog, or simply comment on life in a random website somewhere run the risk of having what they say used against them.

Not everyone is pleased by our discourse. The more we lift up Jesus or note the depravity of the world around us, the more open we make ourselves to winding up on the wrong end of a Googling. Could you lose your job because your blog notes that only those who profess Jesus will be saved? Could a bank turn you down for a loan because you stated online that porn use is deadly to the soul? Is the person you just interviewed with angered by your godly comment on some obscure website thanks to a simple name search on one of the many search engines out there? How would you ever know that the negative response you got from someone sitting on the other side of a mahogany desk was simply due to the fact he didn’t like what you said online about his special brand of deviancy?

While it is true that anyone with a strong opinion and an Internet presence is subject to this kind of spywork, Christians—as in so many other cases—are scrutinized with a higher powered loupe. We are a convenient target of the world’s ire, a worldy wrath that shows no sign of let-up.

Paranoia? Perhaps. But neither did I think that an employer might reject me because of a certain adjective—a life-giving one—that modifies “Education” in my résumé.

Should we stop speaking because the world will hate us even as they hated our Lord? By no means! However, we who talk about the things of Jesus in the forum of the Internet must also realize that we are largely treading cyberspace with few to back us up if the words we speak rile others. We need to find ways of supporting each other should we wind up persecuted by search engine.

Building Castles with Air

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In talking with folks all over, I have been struck by one inescapable reality: We Christians in America have become a prayerless people ignorant of the Bible.

Reasons for this I have outlined in previous entries. We are filling our time with everything but prayer and study. True, our lives are hectic—far too hectic—but if we think we are going to build the Kingdom of God and see ourselves transformed into men and women who would die for Jesus, we cannot do it on ten minutes of prayer dashed off daily as we hustle from place to place. We cannot do it with a lone verse taped to a dashboard. We cannot do it with empty souls.

I do not know why we fail to understand this. But even more, I do not understand why we don’t feel the impoverishment in every part of our lives. It is one thing to be a child of God, but quite another to be filled with the Spirit in such a way that everything we do has a holy sheen to it that others notice instinctively. That we know that this is where we should be, but still we do not care to get there, is a kind of sickness. We have become so used to the illness itself that we have learned to live in this sickly state and to make excuses for feeling rotten.

But this is not what the Lord desires. He wants all of us, not a tossed off token prayer, not a hope that one day we’ll get around to studying and knowing the Scriptures.

We can only get there if we want it. If we are sick and tired of being sick and tired in our souls, then maybe we can work to find ways to make it possible for us to spend the time before the Lord that we need to reach that place where He can truly use us to change the world.

But we have to want it. Do you?