The other day a mentor of mine sent me a short article online by a man named Matt Chandler. In this article Matt begins by saying that he has begun to ask himself a different question to gauge where his walk with Christ is rather than the old question. I too have an old question. I think for years I gauged my walk with Christ by how good my quiet time was, how I treated people, how my thought life was. Frankly, it was a very non-christian way of viewing my life. That is the world’s way of evaluating success. In a sense when we evaluate our lives by standards such as that we are being expressly non-christian. You see what differentiates us as followers of Christ from every other religion is that we do not achieve success as a child of God by what we do. We achieve success as a child of God by He has done and is doing. By the way, that is the heart of the Gospel message. God so loved…. that He gave. Yes, we must believe, but even that is given by him. The writer of Hebrews says that Jesus himself is the author of my faith.
Let me pose a thought to you. When you are tempted to evaluate your life by what you are doing, stop and ask yourself if you are being guilty of suspending your belief in the Gospel for that moment in order to believe that way. Others believe that they are good therefore God loves and accepts them. The Gospel tells us that God is good therefore He accepts us and then we follow Him.
That brings back to Matt’s article. Matt’s personal evaluation question is not how good he has been, but “What stirs my affection for Christ?” What when I am doing it. when I/m around it, or dwelling on it creates a greater hunger for, passion, for and worship of Christ and His mission? I would propose to you that when you ask the wrong question you will always get the wrong answer. Matt is asking the right question. I confess that when I read that I had to stop and ask myself once again…..”what stirs my affection for Christ?” My list was a little different from his but similar in ways. My list includes: talking with a few close friends about Jesus and God’s Word, newborn babys, long walks alone, seasons of silence, a well written book. Those are just a few things I can think of off the top of my head.
What stirs your affection for Christ? Can you list a few things?
Now he went on to ask the next logical question. It was logical to me anyway. “What robs me of my affection for Christ?” ie What when I am doing it, or spending time around it created in me an unhealthy love for the world? Wow! I must confess that when I started thinking about that list honestly I came to several uncomfortable conclusions. 1. Most of the things that robbed me of my affection for Christ were not in and of themselves either morally or ethically wrong. They were pretty neutral. 2. They were things I have been doing for quite a long time and have been a part of my life forever. 3. I have become so used to doing them that their subtlety is deceptive.
These things are usually associated with excess in one form or another. Things that I listed as that which robs me of my affection for Christ. Things like: over-eating, watching mind-less movies, spending excessive time cruising the internet, sleeping in, laziness.
This is not rocket science is it? We do what we want to do and it can rob us of our intimacy with Christ, often without our even being aware that it is. I am sure that you, like me know when what you are doing is stealing our zeal for our Savior.
I am going to commit myself to concentrate on being engaged in the things that stir my affections for Christ and less on the things that rob me of that affection. How about you?
