Learning to Teach Through our Living

What did you do last week to help someone?  Did you do something?  If not, you had a dead faith week.  It does not matter if you abstained from the big sins like murder, gossip, adultery, hate.  Abstaining does not make you God’s.  It does not matter if you did your morning devotions, prayed before meals, or attended church.  Those are just tools to help you know and experience God.  Bringing about God’s will makes you His.  Helping others is what makes you God’s.  Faith apart from works is dead.

Living the life God designed us to live does not happen without us dying to ourselves.  We have to push aside our dreams, our selfish ambitions, our desires, and take on the dreams, ambitions, and desires of Jesus.  We cannot follow our own will and follow His will.  The word Christian, literally means slave of Christ.  Are we really his slave bringing about his will?  Are we Christians?  Or are we slaves to our own will living for ourselves acting like Christians where we want or only when it is convenient?

The message of Jesus is best exhibited when we love; words are necessary but can be very empty without action in love.

The love of Jesus is not contagious if it is only taught.  He will not spread to others if we do not live His life and love out in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our houses, or anywhere we are.  If we just want to teach it, it will not spread.  We will not see lives changed, our church will not grow, nor will our lives be blessed in the way that God wants to bless us.  The love of Jesus is like the color blue.  It must be experienced to be understood.  And since Jesus no longer walks the earth any more.  It is up to us to let people experience His love through us as we let Him lead us by the Holy Spirit.

Words are Necessary but very Empty Without Love

I just finished a great book by a man named Patrick Rothfuss entitled The Name of the Wind.  There is a scene in which a teacher [Elodin] explains to his student [Kvothe] that some things “cannot be described, only experienced and understood.”

“Can you describe all things you understand?” he [the teacher] looked sideways at me [the student].

“Of course.”

Elodin pointed down the street.  “What color is that boy’s shirt?”

“Blue.”

“What do you mean by blue?  Describe it.”

The student then failed to describe the color blue. 

The teacher concluded, “Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself.  Impossible.  Confusing.  Frustrating.”  He lifted his hands high above his head as if streatching for the sky.  “But there are other ways to understanding!” he shouted, laughing like a child.  He threw both arms to the cloudless arch of sky above us, still laughing.  “Look!” he shouted tilting his head back.  “Blue!  Blue!  Blue!” 

Matthew concluded his gospel with Jesus’ teaching:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matt 28:16-20 (ESV)

The message of Jesus is best exhibited when we love; words are necessary but can be very empty without action in love.

Our mission as Christians is to go into the world, make disciples, baptize them, and teach them to live the life Jesus has commanded us to live.  Teaching Jesus’ commandments, of which the foremost are loving God and loving our neighbors, is like teaching what the color blue is.  His love needs to be experienced to be fully understood, and we are the people who should be following his call to share His love with those around us.