Attempting the impossible?
During this last weekend’s message, I talked about one of the barriers we bring to the idea of “living like Jesus.” In doing so, I said that while most of us would intellectually affirm the idea that one of the core ideas of the Christian faith is to “live like Jesus,” in our hearts, most of us don’t really believe it’s possible.
In response, I would argue, we instead live according to the principle of “good enough.”
You might think of the principle of “good enough” in this way. We work really hard to incorporate into our daily living much of what Jesus taught and did, we invest in several additional things which we find difficult and really strive to like like Jesus in these areas of our life, but in those that seem impossible, we tend to simply pray for God to forgive us for failing well short of the standard… and somewhere inside of us we justify our lack of faithfulness with the idea that, “hey, I’m living good enough… God can forgive the rest.”
Now, as I said this weekend, I trust that grace is true, and just like you, I am in constant need of God’s grace… and yet, from the very beginning of the Christian faith, I am reminded that those who led the first followers in the faith believed that we could do impossible things…
They believed that by uniting our sinful nature with Christ in his death that God could actually raise us into a new way of life, just as God raised Christ into a new life through the power of the Resurrection.
And in this new life… this life led when the spirit of God dwells in us… we could actually live like Jesus.
We could find ourselves living in ways that before we had deemed not only unlikely, but wholly impossible.
Like loving your neighbor,
turning the other cheek,
giving all that we have to the needy,
forgiving our enemies,
and praying for those who persecute us…
Each of us have our own list of impossibles… Those things that seem too radical… too ridiculous… too rigid. We might even call them “options” for those seeking a little bit more…
But it’s there… Look at the scriptures. Jesus believed that we could do impossible things.
Rob Bell says it this way in his book Velvet Elvis.
God has an incredibly high view of people. God believes that people are capable of amazing things.
I have been told that I need to believe in Jesus. Which is a good thing. But what I am learning is that Jesus believes in me.
I have been told that I need to have faith in God. Which is a good thing. But what I am learning is that God has faith in me.
Jesus believes that each of us are capable of living incredible generous lives.
It seems like the question we are going to be wrestling with the next four weeks is this: Do we believe it as well?
