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A Christian
Thought for the Month - January 2013
Thoughts for believers & seekers
Thought for the Month -
New Year? I Need Help!
2 Corinthians 5:17 Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence.
The older I get, the more inadequate I feel. Now there is a paradox here because naturally speaking, the older I get the more experience I have and, hopefully, I have learnt from those experiences and so am, again hopefully, wiser as a result. I should feel less inadequate as I go on, is what is logical. However, as a Christian, being real and facing reality is an important part of being, and so the more the years pass, the more aware I am of my capabilities, and that includes my capabilities for getting it wrong, my capabilities for failing.
And then New Year comes along and the inevitable subject of New Year resolutions comes up, accompanied by the fact that most of us give up on our resolutions within a month. We are familiar with failure but we keep on insisting we are ‘all right’. Well, we’re not otherwise we wouldn’t have had New Year resolutions. They are an acknowledgment that I want to change!
I think becoming a Christian is always as an acknowledgement of need. When I look back I realise now it was first an acknowledgment that my life was not what I wanted it to be, morally, spiritually, and no doubt socially. I needed help in all those areas, and because of that, failure meant I needed forgiveness. I suppose my biggest recognition was that although I had nominally called myself a Christian throughout my life (visiting church on rare odd occasions) I actually didn’t know God and had no relationship with Him - which, oddly, I found I wanted.
Within that sense of failure, I guess there was also a sense of lack of purpose and direction in life and although I had a great job and a great salary, wanting for nothing materially, yet I still wanted ‘something’, an elusive ‘something’. When the topic of God and Jesus Christ came up, I found answers being suggested that I had not known or experienced before.
To walk through and claim these answers though, required me to walk through a door labelled ‘Acknowledgement of the truth of my life, Confession and Request.’ Acknowledging what my life was like, confessing my failure and need, and asking for help in the way I was being told - through accepting that Jesus was God’s Son and had died on my behalf - opened the way up for a transformation that was way beyond ‘self-help’.
Having passed through that door, I found changes taking place in me, that millions of other Christians have testified to down through the centuries of the last two thousand years. To someone who has not been through this door, I realise it sounds glib and trite to talk about life transformation, receiving peace and purpose and a sense of being loved, cared for and provided for, but that is the truth and, as I’ve just said, millions of others have testified to the same thing down through the centuries.
If you have never touched a bare wire connected either to a battery or some other power source (I am not recommending touching a bare wire from a power point, it might kill you!) you only know what electricity is by the words of someone else. Yes, you can check it by plugging a light in but even then it requires imagination to accept what you were told in a physics class back in school.
You can never know the reality until you have gone through the door. I once talked for several hours with someone about the reality of God but at the end of that time they could only say, “Well, I’ve heard all you said, but I still don’t believe there is a God!”
“Would you like to take part in a little experiment,” I asked.
“What sort of experiment?”
“Well, I’d like you to humour me and close your eyes and listen to me pray. Then I want you to humour me even more and pretend there is God here in this room, and you say something to Him in prayer.”
“What’s the point of that?”
“Come on, just humour me. If there isn’t a God you’ll just have uttered some words into the air and that cost you virtually nothing.”
“Go on then.”
I prayed something briefly. I can’t even remember what it was, and concluded with a traditional ‘Amen!’ There was a pause for a few moments and then this other person started.
“Well, God, if you are here....”
There was a long pause and then the sound of sobbing.
I opened my eyes and my friend, with eyes now open, was sobbing and managed to utter, “He IS here!” A few minutes later they passed through the door I referred to above - and were utterly changed.
New Year may be about new resolutions, but I know I can’t do it on my own - walk out my life meaningfully and well, I mean. Over forty years ago I walked through that door and it was the best thing I’ve ever done and life was never the same again.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence.
The older I get, the more inadequate I feel. Now there is a paradox here because naturally speaking, the older I get the more experience I have and, hopefully, I have learnt from those experiences and so am, again hopefully, wiser as a result. I should feel less inadequate as I go on, is what is logical. However, as a Christian, being real and facing reality is an important part of being, and so the more the years pass, the more aware I am of my capabilities, and that includes my capabilities for getting it wrong, my capabilities for failing.
And then New Year comes along and the inevitable subject of New Year resolutions comes up, accompanied by the fact that most of us give up on our resolutions within a month. We are familiar with failure but we keep on insisting we are ‘all right’. Well, we’re not otherwise we wouldn’t have had New Year resolutions. They are an acknowledgment that I want to change!
I think becoming a Christian is always as an acknowledgement of need. When I look back I realise now it was first an acknowledgment that my life was not what I wanted it to be, morally, spiritually, and no doubt socially. I needed help in all those areas, and because of that, failure meant I needed forgiveness. I suppose my biggest recognition was that although I had nominally called myself a Christian throughout my life (visiting church on rare odd occasions) I actually didn’t know God and had no relationship with Him -
Within that sense of failure, I guess there was also a sense of lack of purpose and direction in life and although I had a great job and a great salary, wanting for nothing materially, yet I still wanted ‘something’, an elusive ‘something’. When the topic of God and Jesus Christ came up, I found answers being suggested that I had not known or experienced before.
To walk through and claim these answers though, required me to walk through a door labelled ‘Acknowledgement of the truth of my life, Confession and Request.’ Acknowledging what my life was like, confessing my failure and need, and asking for help in the way I was being told -
Having passed through that door, I found changes taking place in me, that millions of other Christians have testified to down through the centuries of the last two thousand years. To someone who has not been through this door, I realise it sounds glib and trite to talk about life transformation, receiving peace and purpose and a sense of being loved, cared for and provided for, but that is the truth and, as I’ve just said, millions of others have testified to the same thing down through the centuries.
If you have never touched a bare wire connected either to a battery or some other power source (I am not recommending touching a bare wire from a power point, it might kill you!) you only know what electricity is by the words of someone else. Yes, you can check it by plugging a light in but even then it requires imagination to accept what you were told in a physics class back in school.
You can never know the reality until you have gone through the door. I once talked for several hours with someone about the reality of God but at the end of that time they could only say, “Well, I’ve heard all you said, but I still don’t believe there is a God!”
“Would you like to take part in a little experiment,” I asked.
“What sort of experiment?”
“Well, I’d like you to humour me and close your eyes and listen to me pray. Then I want you to humour me even more and pretend there is God here in this room, and you say something to Him in prayer.”
“What’s the point of that?”
“Come on, just humour me. If there isn’t a God you’ll just have uttered some words into the air and that cost you virtually nothing.”
“Go on then.”
I prayed something briefly. I can’t even remember what it was, and concluded with a traditional ‘Amen!’ There was a pause for a few moments and then this other person started.
“Well, God, if you are here....”
There was a long pause and then the sound of sobbing.
I opened my eyes and my friend, with eyes now open, was sobbing and managed to utter, “He IS here!” A few minutes later they passed through the door I referred to above -
New Year may be about new resolutions, but I know I can’t do it on my own -