I'm reading an amazing book by Dallas Willard called Divine Conspiracy. Willard says, "Jesus' basic message is 'Rethink your life in the light of the fact that the Kingdom of the Heavens is now available to all'"
With this message from Jesus we should naturally be led to become his students whereby we learn to rutinely obey his way of love. And in doing so will we find ourselves living into the present Kingdom of the Heavens and the salvation that we all hope for.
It's not about doing a few great things for God or even having the right doctorine whereby you can talk like you're in Gods family(Mt 7:21-23). It's about treating your neighbor as yourself in love on a regular basis. Mother Teresah said, "we can do not any great things, only little things with great love" remember (below).
Maybe the desire to do great things paralyzes us from doing anything at all because we realize we really can't do anything great. But if we can know that God's desire is for us to live a day-to-day life filled with little things of great love we would be set free to act.
Those of us who believe Salvation is entirely about life after death won't understand anything I'm saying. Only when we see that this life today is part of our salvation will we begin to understand why Jesus wants us to be his students, disciples, apprentice.
Quit waiting for heaven! Jesus said it's here today. To experience it we must apprentice ourselves to him. And in following his way of love toward God and others, from a heart that's been transformed with his indwelling presence, we will live into the eternal kind of life that we were originally created for.
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This reminded me of a bit of a conversation I was having earlier this week. A friend was talking to me about the dynamics of a trusting relationship. She said that she trusts her parents because that trust has been established and has never been betrayed. She has trusted friends whom she had established trust with - but once betrayed, she would not be able to immediately trust them without some time and effort to reestablish a basis of actions that proved that this person was able to be trusted.
If we are hesitating to follow Christ and submit fully to Him, is it because we don't trust Him? And if we do not trust Him, why the heck not. If He is the unwavering, completely selfless, loving Creator that He claims and we profess - then He certainly hasn't betrayed our trust in Him.
What then? Perhaps we have never given ourselves to even trust Him in the first place - for that is the only way in the equation we would not have a basis to trust Him by.
And why do we not trust? Are we willing to take His free offer of life and not give Him ours? That's pretty lame - and I think He can see right through that. He who wants to save his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for Christ will save it.
I see three different circumstances here: 1. You want to hold on to your life and you do, 2. You want to not hold on to your life but you do any way, or 3. You want to not hold on to your life and you don't. Only one of these fits the bill - you have to not only want to lose your life, you have to actually lose it!
Word.
Yeah, the crazy thought is that in loosing my life it will actually be lost and I'll be the fool of the century. But quite the opposite happens. Jesus says that in loosing your life (giving it to him as your teacher among other things) you actually find that you have the life you've only dreamed of. Now if that dream includes tons of selfish junk of course that is not what you'll find, but you'll find the deep things of peace, significance, joy, relationship, adventure, love, and unending life. I'll take some of that for all I got!
"Now if that dream includes tons of selfish junk"
Agreed, and I would just say that if you "You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit (Romans 8.9)", then you must be careful of the motivations to which you cling. Paul also said, "if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it." Stupid sin. Get the hell out of me!
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