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Pastoral
Pondering:
Christian life will
be when we
behold new heart |
After
many years of observing the Christian life I’m struck by how difficult we make what
should be easy.
Jesus said his yoke is easy and his burden is light, and the writer in
Hebrews compares this life to entering God’s rest.
I surely did not experience this for most of my Christian life. After much
observation I have concluded most people’s Christian experience goes from being like
the prodigal son, who was separated from his father, to being born again and restored to
the father, only to then become like the older brother.
The older brother lived in the father’s house but was bitter over his
penury; he cried out he had nothing to show for his faithfulness, not even a lousy goat to
feed his friends.
His father was astonished by this outburst, saying in effect, “Good
grief, son, when I gave your brother half of my estate, I gave you the other half. Why
haven’t you appropriated and used what is yours?”
From my perspective this seems to be the condition of most Christians today.
Spiritually speaking, many live as paupers even while walking through acres of diamonds.
In this condition the Christian life is not easy, not restful; it’s a
struggle.
God wants us to be righteous, so we try to be righteous; God wants us to be
holy, so we try and be holy; God wants us to be loving, so we try to be loving; God wants
us to be patient, so we try and be patient — only to fail, fail, fail, fail.
Was God kidding about this easy, restful life, or are most of us missing
something? The answer can be found in Jesus’ response to the woman at the well.
Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you,
“Give me a drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have given you living
water.“
We tend to limit this “gift of God” to salvation, which is truly a
gift. But the secret of living the easy, restful Christian life begins when we realize the
gift of God includes a new heart. When we accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, we receive a
gift from God — a brand new spiritual heart.
Enlightened and enlivened by the Holy Spirit, it contains all the qualities
God wants us to express: holiness, righteousness, love, patience.
Now we are creatures with two hearts: the fallen heart and a new, spiritual
heart possessing all the qualities of God’s spirit. The key to entering the restful
Christian life is learning to draw from the new heart, and this is an act of the will.
A basic spiritual law says we become what we behold. With our will we choose what
we behold. When Scripture says, “reckon yourselves to be...” it means we are to
use our will to behold and draw from the new heart. We make a conscious decision to ignore
the old heart (crucifying the old man) and to behold the new heart (putting on Christ).
In so doing we draw from it as our moral center, and then we can express the
qualities to which God calls us. Once we learn to draw from the new heart, the Christian
life gets much easier and our prayers change.
No longer do we ask God to give us righteousness, holiness, love or patience.
Rather, we ask him to teach us to drink from that part of the spring of living water that
contains these qualities. In this beholding, we become.
We possess our “estate,” and we rest.
Joe Gerick is the general superintendent of Northwest Yearly
Meeting of Friends. |
|
From Oct. 25,
2003, Newberg Graphic
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