Spirituality Column #335
April 16, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Exactly how any one of us might come to faith in Christ is, to me, one of the great mysteries in life.

All of us as believers have family, friends, associates – shoot, everybody we encounter – with whom we want to share this great gift.  And that’s what the Bible tells us to do – make “disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18-22) even to “the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).  “How” we should do it boils down to replicating, as best we can, the unselfish and sacrificial love of Jesus.  Jesus gives us “why” in John 16:33, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Doesn’t everyone want and need peace?  Sure, but … actions are misinterpreted, words are not understood, and motives are suspect.  We blame ourselves for not “converting” someone.  But remember: Jesus had the exact same problem with the Pharisees and Pontius Pilate.  History shows us that even the holiest words can fall on deaf, hostile ears.

In our personal lives, it is especially hard to see loved ones firmly entrenched in their steadfast knowledge of the world and rebuff the message of Jesus.  We have to be honest with ourselves and ask whether our love is selfish or unselfish because truly, only selfish love can be rebuffed.  Yet we can do what Jesus wants us to do as long as we draw breath if our love is truly unselfish.  We can also take heart that God isn’t keeping score of anything but our love and our faith.  “Souls saved” is squarely the job of the Holy Spirit.

But how does that happen?  There doesn’t appear to be a formula.

In my own case, I can look back, track the steps, see what happened, and it all makes perfect sense … now.  But I didn’t see it coming, would have run from it if I had, wasn’t really looking, and executed no repeatable “system.”

I think that’s what makes evangelism in general – sharing the Good News of Christ – so difficult.  I mean, yes it’s easy to tell a story about how I got here, but impossible to draw a map for someone else’s journey.  Only God can do that, and God starts by giving each of us the freedom to accept or deny Christ’s love.

Maybe that’s why one’s journey to Christ is so special, because God makes the path unique and personal.  I’m convinced it’s a mystery we can’t embrace until we realize that Christ is first embracing us.

Walters’ (rlwcom@aol.com) conversion story appears in his book Common Christianity, Uncommon Commentary in columns 55-59 and 252-253.

Spirituality Column #334
April 9, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters

On the radio just before Easter I heard, consecutively, two unrelated sermons by two different preachers making the following point about the empty tomb of Jesus:

The stone was “rolled away” not so Jesus could get out, but so that the witnesses could get in.  Dumb me; I’d never thought of it before.

Could it be any more obvious?  How else could Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Salome, then Peter and John, the other disciples, the 500, and over time the entire world, learn about God’s love and the miracle of the resurrection?  Duh.  Of course Jesus didn’t need divine aid to move a rock; he had just beaten death, forgiven sin and restored a fallen world to fellowship with the Creator God Almighty.  It was mankind that needed divine aid to remove the stone of its sadness, emptiness, guilt, and disbelief.

All four Gospels mention the stone: Matthew 28:2, Mark 16:4, Luke 24:2, and John 20:1. It seems Pilate’s tomb guards were “guarding” the evil done by a dark world, e.g., killing Jesus, and angels who “gleamed like lightning” frightened off the guards and revealed the glorious truth of the risen Lord.

And it struck me … do any of us come to faith in Christ without, somewhere along the journey, God rolling a rock out of our way?  Or without angels removing a barrier to our faith in the eternal unseen?  Have we ever approached Jesus thinking he was dead and been thoroughly surprised at the life we found?

I sure have.  Like when I came to faith well into my adult years.  It didn’t happen all at once, just like Christianity didn’t emerge fully formed upon the witness of the miraculously empty tomb.  That rolled-away stone revealed the most enormous, total truth the world will ever know.  It instantly triggered faith, fear and joy, followed by confusion and curiosity.  “Jesus is risen!  Our Lord is alive!” the witnesses rejoiced.

But … what happens next?

That’s what I wondered the first time I walked out of church: what would happen next?  I had gone in with no intent or expectations of actually “finding Jesus.”  But I came out having encountered “the empty tomb” – with spiritual proof positive in my heart that Christ was real and Jesus was alive and somehow everything I’d heard about Jesus Christ was true.  I had found the truth of Jesus and wanted to actually find Him.  But honestly, I had no idea how to go about it.

Thus the journey began.  With the Spirit’s help, the journey continues.

But I’ll never forget the day the stone was rolled away.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) wonders if you remember when your stone was rolled away.

Spirituality Column #333
April 2, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters
Author of the book Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Spirituality Column #332
March 26, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Most people in our culture know the basics of the Christian story.

Jesus was born peacefully in a manger, died violently on a cross, came back unexpectedly from the dead, and somehow because of all that our sins are graciously forgiven and we can go eternally to heaven.  And, oh yeah: Jesus Saves, Jesus is the Son of God, and Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.

Not everyone believes it, but almost everyone knows the story and understands they are a sinner in need of redeeming help.  Thanks to Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter, the majority of folks have at least a visceral attachment to Christian faith.  That’s one of the great gifts of our culture: that people generally accept and understand there is room for improvement in their moral being and they’d sincerely like to “be a better person.”  The problem is that the outlandishness of the whole “Jesus Story” – being a humble servant dedicated to glorifying God – doesn’t pass the secular sanity test of “Looking out for No. 1.”

Most people see “No. 1” in the mirror, not in their faith.  To paraphrase Rick Blaine in Casablanca, “Here’s looking at me, kid.”  After all, who can be more important than “me”?  Whose priorities can supersede mine?   We are coached by popular society to “find ourselves” and “define ourselves” and to organize our activities around the pursuit of “being as good as I can be.”  So we ask, “Who or what can help me achieve that goal?”  People might answer with “Jesus” or “church” or some other religious, spiritual, or self-help term, but too often the small and mistaken goal is “me.”

Turning toward church only works when we turn toward the Cross with the goal of discovering something about Jesus.  And that only works if we approach Jesus with our entire life: our heart, mind, soul, strength, personality, treasure … everything.  We cannot define one part of our life in Jesus, and another part in something else.

That’s because Jesus is bigger than anything else.  He is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3).  Jesus totally defines himself and anyone who truly follows Him.  In His life, His ministry, His trial, His torture, His death and His resurrection, Jesus submitted to the will and glory of God.

If I want to be like Jesus, to get to know Jesus, that’s what I have to do.

Because the real story and basic truth of Christianity is that Jesus Christ is No. 1, and I’m not.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) recommends an Easter Sunday trip to church focused on God’s love, not on one’s personal sins.  Try it, you’ll like it.

Spirituality Column #331
March 19, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Spirituality Column #330
March 12, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters
 
Tip: Watch “The Bible,” History Channel, Sundays at 8 p.m. throughout March.

Spirituality Column #329
March 5, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Even people who are not especially close to God are often quick to blame God when things – health, relationships, jobs, money, dreams, etc. – fall apart in their lives.

“If God loved me,” they lament, “He wouldn’t let this happen …”

Conversely, believers are quick to blame Satan when things fall apart in theirs.  “The enemy is attacking me,” they piously claim.

And while I am convinced that both angels and demons – good spirits and evil spirits – exist and are active in this world (they appear frequently in the Bible), it is important to get a biblical handle on what God and Satan do and don’t do; who they are, and who they aren’t.

God is Creator (Genesis 1:1), God is love (1 John 4:8), God is good (1 Timothy 4:4), God is light (1 John 1:5 ) God is justice and righteousness (Isaiah 9:7), God is eternal (Genesis 21:33), God is eternal life (1 John 5:20), God is Father (John 1:18), Son (John 1:49), Holy Spirit (John 4:24) and sovereign (Daniel 4:25).

Satan is created (Revelation 12:7-9, Ezekiel 28:14), is the tempter of Jesus (Matthew 4:1), is the tempter of man (1 Thessalonians 3:4), is our accuser (Zechariah 3:2), is our tormenter (2 Corinthians 12:7), is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44), wants control of this world (1 John 5:19), is the enemy of man (1 Peter 5:18), is the founder of sin (1 John 3:8), and the coin of his realm is death (Romans 6:23).

What’s critically important to understand is that God is not the God we want him to be … God is the God HE wants to be.  Goodness and righteousness are best defined as “what God actually is” (see Psalm 23).  Our human mistake is thinking ultimate goodness and righteousness should reflect our human opinions and experience founded in earthly pride and power, rather than in the humility and service of Jesus Christ.

And that mistake is precisely the flashpoint of Satan’s evil lordship on earth.

Satan – born of heaven as an angel who fell of his own pride (Ezekiel 28:17) – battles God by suggesting sin, not by inflicting it.  Satan suggested sin in the Garden, and he continues to suggest sin to us today.  He tempts us to dismiss God’s truth and accept his lies of fleeting earthly glory.  Way too often, we agree.  Willingly.

God is nobody’s enemy, and Satan is nobody’s friend.  The solution to life’s challenges is neither to blame God nor curse Satan, but simply to pray – earnestly – to be closer to Jesus Christ.  God never dismisses those prayers.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) wonders if anyone else remembers Flip Wilson’s character “Geraldine” saying, “The devil made me do it.”