Every day a thousand things clamor for our attention, yelling to us about how important they are. Almost everyone in our lives are happy to tell us what should matter to us, what our focus should be. We can so easily live distracted, which also means we live exhausted as we get judged from every side about what should be our primary focus and how to make it so.
I have been rejected and beat up by religious people more than nonreligious. I know it’s because they have decided that the religion they hold is what’s saving them, what’s making God happy and they are terrified I’m doing it wrong. I have often said (as my mentor and friend Mike Wells taught me to do) that I will say things that are wrong, even downright blasphemy. God will allow this because He wants to draw people to Himself, not to follow me. It also keeps me in a place where I know my weakness, and I know I need Holy Spirit to interpret the very words that come out my mouth or my laptop. He is the great interpreter, and He is able to translate and speak through whatever is said to bring His message to the person.
I will be the first to state that I can get it wrong, and I never want to stand up as someone who has all the answers. Because I don’t. All I have to offer is Jesus—a Life who gently invades our hearts and heals us from brokenness. I don’t want to get distracted by whatever program or theology someone has decided is preeminent. I want to be the person with the one-stringed banjo who keeps playing that one string over and over, because it’s the only string that matters to me. There are days often where people accuse me of being affiliated with all sorts of broken people. Isn’t that funny? We are all broken, but have arguments about who is more broken and judge and condemn others to try to make ourselves feel superior.
I had a theology professor in seminary who asked one night what you needed to believe to be in Christ. He filled an entire three-sectioned white board at the front of the room with answers people shouted out. Then, in a move that made everyone hold their breath, he erased it all and wrote JESUS across the whole board. He reminded us that we can get off onto all sorts of tangents, but really what mattered was putting our faith in Jesus and believing He was what we needed for life.
If my entire life’s work is summed up in this message of Jesus, healer of the brokenhearted, I will be happy. I don’t want to get distracted by all the other messages, or feel I need to figure it all out. I am a sheep, and I am only getting it right when I’m following the Shepherd. It really is quite a relief to settle into your own lack apart from Christ. But in Him, all sorts of impossible things are possible.
So, stand firm in the Lord, keeping your eyes on Jesus who is our reward. Don’t let the distractions of the enemy move you into a place of confusion, chaos and worry. Ask God for the very faith to keep running the race with perseverance and the strength to do so. Don’t get sucked into the arguments and comparisons of religious bondage, or the mockery coming from people who don’t understand. Don’t give up, but push deeply into the love that surrounds you in the presence of God, filling you up and overflowing all around you to those who need love the most.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:12-14