I’ve been away for quite some time because explaining where I am in my own personal growth is challenging at present. I am finding my personal paradigms blown to bits with new ones being rebuilt that look nothing like what I used to think faith was and how it worked. This passage – from Ted Dekker’s newest publication, “Waking Up: How I Found My Faith by Losing It” – slapped me right in the face with an intense level of personal conviction. I have so failed letting love define me and that has to change. Read and do with this what you will; it’s just the latest step in a new way of looking at faith and how it affects my daily behavior.
“If there is one elephant in the room among most of us who call ourselves Christian, it is that what we think and say we believe and what we actually experience are all too often two, radically different realities. Ironically, we ourselves are often the last to see this disparity.
We think and say we believe in Jesus, but we are anxious for tomorrow and cringe with fear in the face of the storm. We think and say we love our neighbor and our enemy, but we court jealousy of those who have what we want, and we secretly despise those who lash out against us.
We are Christians from different denominations with various emphases in doctrine, yet in our daily lives we seem to be the same, often stumbling in darkness and feeling lost and condemning ouselves and those around us.
The evidence of our lives does not match our rhetoric.
Paul’s teaching was utterly clear: The primary evidence show by those who know the Father is this: love. Jesus was just as clear: Not just any love, but an extravagant expression of love that is kind to those who are cruel to us, not only those who show us love in return.
As Paul wrote, a love that is patient, showing no jealousy or arrogance, keeping no record or wrong, not seeking its own and not provoked by another’s behavior. These are the evidences of true love which flows from those who know the Father and his limitless love for them.
But it seems that we show all manner of evidence but the one that matters most. We call ourselves Christian but we are not known for the kind of love Jesus said would mark his followers. Have we lost the tune? Are singing the wrong song?
We show the evidence of profound words to others, speaking truth in the tongues of men and angels, but we rise up in anger at our brother and are therefore as guilty as any murderer, as Jesus said.
We show the evidence of informed doctrine and all knowledge, having studied the Scriptures, and yet we do not love the lowest person as Christ, so our knowledge is worthless.
We may give all of our possessions to the poor and surrender our bodies to be burned and have faith to move mountains and heal disease, calling Him Lord, yet these profit us nothing if love does not rule our hearts.
We call ourselves born again, baptized in water and the Spirit. We are diligent in taking communion, singing in choirs, serving the church, paying tithes, reading the Scriptures, fasting when called to humble ourselves, gathering in Bible studies, attending conferences, going on missions, voting for the right bills, and rehearsing our doctrine.
And yet rivers of love, joy and peace do not flow from us like living waters, and so, as Paul said, all of these profit us nothing.
Can you relate?
What matters isn’t our stated belief and doctrine but how we live and what we experience in the story of our lives, as Jesus, John, James, and Paul all make so abundantly clear. It’s our actual experience and expression of life that shows us and the world what we truly believe and to waht extent we truly love, not what we say we believe or who we say we love. If we say we have faith, but the working of our life don’t reflect that faith, that faith is either asleep or dead.
This brings us back to the elephant in the room, easily seen by all. We are not being who we say we are. And if what we say we believe and what we experience in life are in conflict, we end up in misery. One of the two must eventually yield.”
Mama Jo's Heart 