Everyone has a story. And many times we diminish the beauty of our own because we compare it to someone else’s. We don’t have to do that. We just have to learn to embrace our own.
“Through All Of It” – Colton Dixon
Tag: longsuffering
No shortcuts to a deeper relationship with God
I subscribe to a website that shows you when e-books get discounted. One day, one of the books on sale was related to discipleship and being able to increase the depth of discipleship in a short amount of time. While on the surface this does not appear to be a problem. I found that the more I thought about it, the less I liked what it was saying about the discipleship process.
What do I mean? It makes me uncomfortable to think people are trying to short-circuit the discipleship process in their lives.
The reason for this is there is no shortcut to a deeper level of discipleship. There is no quick way of growing in intimacy with God. And to think that there is we put ourselves on a path toward self-deception. A path that leads to spiritual harm and weakness. Discipleship is a journey. It is a journey that takes time and endurance in order to achieve the ultimate goal.
This raises an interesting question: What is the ultimate goal of discipleship?
I believe the ultimate goal of discipleship is a deep and abiding relationship with God. That’s it. That’s the whole of it.
That relationship with God cannot be achieved by taking shortcuts. Now, I know that the book and other books like it are not trying to necessarily give the reader the impression it is possible to have a deep relationship with God in a short amount of time. However, that was the effect it had on me. And I have been maturing in my understanding of discipleship for over 20 years.
The fact that we struggle in our discipleship journey does not mean there is not some redemptive purpose in it. None of us likes to struggle. None of us likes to think there is a measure of suffering we all must endure. But life does not always come wrapped in a tight little bow.
Sometimes life is messy. In other times it can be downright vicious. But in spite of whatever comes at us in this life, we will do all we can to look towards what God has promised and not merely what we hope for him to fulfill at our request.
In my own life discipleship has often been costly. The reason for the cost of true and lasting discipleship is it requires us to sacrifice something we would normally never consider we could sacrifice. And what is that? We are called to sacrifice our very lives.
The reason for the cost of true and lasting discipleship is it requires us to sacrifice something we would normally never consider we could sacrifice.
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This is the very thing Jesus does in his own example to us. Jesus enters into the world and he lives a life among people who do not understand who he truly is. He lives among people who only see someone who can bring them out of their own suffering and into what they believe is a life of abundance. But not the spiritual kind of abundance God desires to give. But the kind of abundance that says we are supposed to be rich in the world’s treasures. But Jesus says he has come to give us life and that life to the fullest.
I think what troubled me the most about books that promise to give us special insights and a quicker route to a deeper relationship with God is it offers something that not even God has promised to us. God calls us into a deeper relationship with him through his son Jesus Christ and invites us to live all eternity with him. Too often we find this invitation to be too far off. And so what we do, we look for ways to help God give us what we desire. But it’s not something we desire according to God’s purposes. It is what we desire according to our own.
I think one of the great challenges of the Christian faith is trusting in God’s timing. Learning to rely upon God to bring us to those moments and places he has determined are for our greatest good.
And so we need to learn to be patient. We need to learn to be more trusting. We need to learn to be more content with what God is giving us rather than looking for a “get holy quick scheme.”
Lent 2019 | Day 8: The Patience of Grace
God’s loving-kindness is better than we realize, when we realize what could have been!
There is a quality of God’s grace that is often overlooked. Grace is a multifaceted diamond. Each face reveals a new wonder of God and the grace he gives to us. There are a couple of passages that highlight this attribute and expose a beauty in God that we do not rejoice in enough. I know that I don’t.
Let’s look at them both. The first is Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome.
21But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26 ESV, emphasis added)
The second is found in the books of Acts.
30The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:30-31 ESV, emphasis added)
What makes both of these passages so remarkable is that it explicitly makes the claim that God “passed over” and “overlooked” the sins of fallen men and women because it was not yet time to judge them. Now, I know that this time of overlooking culminated in Jesus. That the reason God did not execute justice on sinners was because God was waiting until he could unleash his wrath for all sin, for all time at the cross. So, I am not trying to split a hair or make a theological point contrary to the implications of the text.
My hope is to highlight that God has revealed that, in his grace, he does not smite sinners instantaneously for their sin so that they might come to know repentance and might have an opportunity for a restored relationship with God the Father. That God’s loving-kindness is better than we realize, when we realize what could have been!
As each day draws us closer to the celebration of God’s miraculous salvation of lost souls in Jesus, I hope we spend a little more time thinking about how good God’s grace really is.