Simplistically Difficult

“We love God as much as the one we love the least.” 

-Dorothy Day The Reckless Way of Love

Take a minute and let that sink in.

That truth is a hard pill to swallow, but it is nonetheless true. God loves us all. His greatest desire is to be reconciled to His creation…ALL of His creation. This includes your enemies. This includes every person that disagrees with you. This includes every person who has wronged or hurt you. He desires a relationship with all of them whether you think they deserve it or not. Every time you do or say something that misrepresents Jesus and stands in the way of that relationship, you are standing in opposition to God and His will. Your love for God is only as strong as your love for that person you despise the most. 

Can I just be real for a minute and say that really sucks? It is so much easier for me to stand over here on my side away from them. It is much easier to fall asleep at night counting all the ways that I am right and they are wrong. 

For some, truth is comforting, and grace is hard. For others, grace is comforting, and truth is hard. The thing is, if we are going to live like Jesus, we have to be in the business of both grace and truth equally. We have to operate out of truth just as much as we operate out of grace. The hard part is learning to recognize which one is needed most in the moment, and then having enough courage and self-control to elevate the one that is needed over the one we really want to give.

Like everything else, Jesus knew how to do this perfectly. 

Am I the only one that ever wonders why Christianity spreads like wildfire in countries where it is illegal to practice Christianity? Or how the early church grew as quickly as it did when there was no Bible around to preach from? Reading books like, The Insanity of God and The Book of Acts have led me to believe that the answer is probably the most difficult and the simplest thing we will ever be asked to do. It seems to me that Christianity spreads the farthest and the fastest in areas where the people keep the main thing the main thing, in the words of Pastor Clay. What is the main thing you ask? Jesus. 

People are drawn to Jesus. A recent study done by the market research team from the He Gets Us campaign found that over 50% of people are open to learning more about Jesus, and people overwhelmingly agree that His teachings are positive for society as a whole. The issue is not Jesus, friends. The issue is those of us that claim to know and have a relationship with Him. 

Western Christianity has become institutionalized in my opinion. We tend to view church as a place that we go on Sunday mornings. It has become a box to check rather than a lifestyle to be lived out. The early church was not a building to visit on Sunday mornings. The early church was a lifestyle. It was living together, serving one another, sharing meals, praying together, and caring for each other’s needs. The early church was an image of Jesus, but can we say the same for the modern day church? 

People have to see Jesus before they will get Christ. When Jesus called his first disciples, they did not immediately see Him as Christ. Some of them didn’t see Him as Christ after living with Him for a couple of years. All they saw was Jesus at first. They had to be introduced to Him. They lived with Him and watched how He lived and interacted with people. Observing His actions and listening to His truth is what led them to eventually know Christ. It is not either or; it is both and. Grace (action) and truth. 

We were not called to make an us and them world. We were called to make disciples. How do we do that? The same way Jesus did. We introduce them to Jesus before expecting them to know Christ. We do this through our actions and words towards them. It’s in the way that we live. We live to draw people closer to Jesus, not push them farther away. We live to remove the barriers between them and Jesus, not become one more stumbling block on their path. We live to represent Jesus well. This is the part we were called to play. We play our part and then, trust the Holy Spirit to do the rest knowing that God desires a relationship with ALL His children. It is not for us to decide who is worthy and who isn’t. After all, none of us really deserve the grace we are given each day, but I sure am thankful for it.