“What is the secret to great living? Entire separation to Christ and devotion to Him. Thus speaks every man and woman whose life has made more than a passing flicker in the spiritual realm. It is the life that has no time for trifling that counts.”
~ Amy Carmichael
Oh, that you would bear with me in a little folly—and indeed you do bear with me. For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted—you may well put up with it!
~ 2 Corinthians 4:1-4
Jesus is the real deal. We believe this to be true. And we, in the western church (especially) have worked hard to try to make the spreading of the Gospel more efficient. We have developed Churches and Bible colleges and seminaries and pastors and mission boards and programs and books and bulletins and banners and letter campaigns and training seminars and oh, you name it. Are you tired yet?
And this is the problem.
We have worked to make our programs work for God. We have tried really hard. We have spent millenia hammering out the details of how all this should work. Some of our organizations have actual layers of dogma that interact with each other in ways that are just as complicated as the most complicated of bureaucracies. We have driven the efficiencies of our faith to the nth. We have institutionalized Christianity. And again, herein lies the problem. The Gospel is not efficient. It is not designed to achieve maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense.
The Gospel is very effective. It works every time is simply believed. There is not one time that it has failed. Ever. Period. Jesus Saves! But the Gospel is far from efficient.
The Gospel was never designed to be transmitted by tracts and Christian radio shows (though we may rightly use and listen to both). It was designed to be spread by the pouring out of life and the spilling of blood; not pouring out other people’s lives like in slavery, or spilling other people’s blood, like in a conquest. No, the lives to be poured out and the blood to be spilled are our own.
Now, Jesus is the penultimate example of this model. His Life and blood are surely what even makes the spilling of our own worth something. And we see through the ages, that the model is that Jesus calls us to come and die that many others might live forever. And the blood we spill is not done in efficient ways. It is often at the end of a blunt trauma, or by a rope that has finally torn through skin tissue into blood vessel.
And the lives we live are not efficient either. We plow and seed and water and wait. We get up every day, and in His strength, we simply live and move and have our being in an ever-flowing moment of His Life moving in us and through us. The Chinese call this kind of living on the energy of a life-force: “Qi” (chee). They get a simple fact. Human beings cannot generate efficiencies of their own – they can only spin their wheels in the trying. Human beings must be imbued with a power that is (at first) external to themselves in order to function properly. Now, many Chinese may miss that the true Source of this Life is Jesus alone – but surely they get the concept of walking in the Spirit way better than us occidental westerners.
And this is where the Bible takes us. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who have no sense that they can do anything on their own, or in their own power. But, and READ THIS BELOVED, once we understand that we are nothing, and He is everything, we are quickly convinced that any activity that is separated from Jesus is totally ineffective. Apart from Him we can do nothing.
Apart from G_d, you (you) dear friend, can do absolutely nothing.
We become, by this conviction, this changing of our minds, this repentance – torn away from the world, and wholly separated to Him, because to do anything other is simply foolish. However, beyond the negative, is an incredible positive! When there is no power of our own in the system, there is only His power. And G_d is – to use a big theological word – Omnipotent. He is all powerful. His power is infinite and without end.
And His power is ours, to be used for His glory.
Might we all tonight abandon any sense that we need to somehow be efficient with our energies and activities in the work of the Kingdom. Nah, let’s go lavish! There is simply no end to the effectiveness of the power of the Gospel. It is a messy, waist-deep, sleeves rolled-up kind of existence. AND it is the only way. His Way. He is The Way, The Truth and The Life.
