Wake Me Up
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us… And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Nelson Mandela
Member class, doctrine class, small group, Christian growth, evangelism class, courses on finance and marriage and parenting, leadership training class, hermeneutics, spiritual gifts, biblical counseling, participate in missions, carry a significant local church ministry load. (my paraphrase)
You could earn an MBA with less effort. But let me ask you: A program like this – does it teach a person how to apply principles or how to walk with God? They are not the same thing. Change the content and any cult could do this. Gandhi, Confucius, Jefferson, they all had principles for a better life. But only Christianity can teach you to walk with God.
We forfeit that birthright when we take folks through a discipleship program whereby they master any number of Christian precepts and miss the most important thing of all, the very thing for which we were created: intimacy with god.
Truth be told, you couldn’t master enough principles to see you safely through this Story. There are too many surprises.
Only by walking with God can we hope to find the path that leads to life. That is what it means to be a disciple. After all, aren’t we followers of Christ? Then by all means, let’s actually follow him. Not ideas about him, not just his principles. Him.
A personal walk with God comes to us through wisdom and revelation. You will soon discover that we need both.
When the apostles needed the help of some good men to shepherd the exploding new church, they chose men “full of the Spirit and wisdom” Acts 6:3. The two go together; we need both.
God has given us all sort of counsel and direction in his written Word; thank God we have it written down in black and white. We would do well to be familiar with it, study it with all the intensity of the men who studied the maps of the Normandy coastline before they hit the beaches on D-Day. The more that wisdom enters our hearts, the more we will be able to trust our hearts in difficult situations. Notice that wisdom is not cramming our heads with principles. It is developing a discerning heart. What made Solomon such a sharp guy was his wise and discerning heart. I Kings 3:9
The particular foolishness of the church in the past century was Reason above all else. The result has been a faith stripped of the supernatural, the Christianity of tips and techniques. We have our morals and we have our precepts, but where is the living God?
Just a few of my notes from Waking the Dead
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