"But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did." (1 John 2:5-6).
A pretty simple, yet incredibly difficult teaching, isn't it?
Last night I was hanging out with my buddy Justin at a Starbucks in Granger, and Justin got a call from one of his friends who wanted to hang out. I knew the kid as well, and my first response was, Oh great.... You see, this particular friend is just about as different as it gets from Justin or me. He does not love God. He hates his parents with a passion (always a hot topic of conversation when we're with him). He struggles with deep insecurities and depression. He's a 20-year-old practicing homosexual, currently in a relationship with a 42-year-old man. And that's just the start of the demonic strongholds in his life...
So here I was just chillin' at Starbucks with my best friend, entirely immersed in my own comfort zone...and I found myself not wanting to step outside of it. How often does that happen? Too much...
Well, like I said, I didn't exactly want to hang out with this guy, but yet somewhere in the back of my head I knew that Jesus would be jumping at the opportunity to hang out with someone who needed him so much. For as Jesus says in Mark 2:17, It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
This particular conversation with Justin's friend began like so many that I had witnessed before. This guy began sharing all about the horror that is his life. It made me uncomfortable enough to realize one thing: I spend WAY too much time with Christians! I'm so used to conversations that are centered around the Church, God, and Scripture. This conversation was far from that.
But yet somehow in the midst of this conversation (a mostly one-sided conversation as Justin and I sat and listened), things actually took a natural shift to allow Justin and I to speak truth into this young man's life. He recently got a tattoo on his back, and part of the tattoo was a verse from Proverbs! Kinda crazy, I know. So that opened up a huge conversation about Scripture and Truth. This kid began to share about how he thought that we were all born "neutral" (in a spiritual sense). Because of this friend's interest in Scripture and in our thoughts on "good vs. evil," Justin and I were able to share with him about the fall and about how we are born in sin. Justin shared clearly with his friend about how the only way to be free from this sin nature is through a relationship with Jesus. It was pretty cool. I was so proud of Justin for the way he clearly presented Truth in a loving way to his friend.
So this morning when I read: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did, I think I had a pretty good visual of what this looks like. We are to walk in obedience to God, and we are to be the hands and feet of Jesus on this earth.
So what about you? Are you being a doctor to the sick? Are you learning to walk as Jesus did?
God wants to use YOU!!!
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