Last month we started a talk about following Jesus and understanding Him as “the way.” We can treat Jesus and our relationship with Him as something good for Sundays only, or we can daily walk with Him allowing him to influence our lives in each moment. The choice is ours, but Jesus wants the latter. Maybe you do to, but you don’t know how to go about rekindling the fire of passion for your Lord.
There are three basic steps to renewing your relationship with Jesus and opening your life to His—repent, believe, and follow.
While we are familiar with the word “repentance” and may even have a good short definition, we find ourselves asking the question—do we really practice repentance? At it’s heart, repentance is about a decision we make. When we repent, we decide to leave one life and set out for another. We dig out old habits, behaviors, and addictions. What is left is a hole that must be filled. If it is not filled, we refill it with the same old, comfortable, destructive habits, behaviors, and addictions. Something new must be put in that hole. This is the nature and power of “belief.”
To believe in Jesus is not a once and done thing. Belief is ongoing. Belief is daily involvement in our personal, trusting relationship with Jesus. As we walk with Jesus each day He begins to fill the hole and change our lives. I want to be clear. The hole does not get filled all the way up the instant we say, “I believe.” Just like we’d fill a deep hole one shovelful at a time, so Jesus spends all the time we need gently filling the hole in our lives with shovelfuls of love, hope, comfort, peace, joy, self-control, gentleness, kindness, etc… When we slip and allow some of the old habits into the hole, we confess, dig them out, and ask Jesus to continue filling us with Himself. At sometime along the way, usually before our holes are completely filled, Jesus calls us to walk with him.
To “follow” is to walk with Jesus. Long before the holes in our lives are completely full, Jesus gets us moving alongside Him in a walk that is visibly and audibly a reflection of his life. We are called to move and act in ways that show people the kingdom of God breaking into our world RIGHT NOW. I guess you could say that walking with Jesus is allowing Jesus to use us to fill holes in others while he is still filling the holes in our own lives.
Martin Luther talks about daily renewal in this relationship we have with Jesus making the sign of the cross on our foreheads as we wash our faces in the morning. This act leads us along the path of repentance, belief, and following. May God bless us as we rekindle the fires of our passion for our Lord. May we realize how blessed we are as we recognize God in us fueling that desire.
|
