For all of the ways that we could spend our words this week, what is more worthy than spending them on the truth of Jesus Christ? For all of the things that we could share with the world, whether at home, at work, at play, or on the cyber canvas that you call your own, what is more important than the boast of Jesus Christ?
We will think of them … ways to spend our words and our time accordingly. Some necessary. Some less than. But when this time next week rolls around, we will have recorded a solid seven days’ worth of lip service to our life’s walk. And for all of the ways that our lives will require the investment of our words over the next week, none is more important than the ones that we will invest on behalf of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
None.
Yes, there will be those necessary occasions that ask for less—occasions that don’t call for the Jesus talk. But all of them, every last one of them, require the heart of a Jesus walk. When our “necessary” doesn’t require our words, we still write a story. Their witness speaks even when our words remain silent.
The Apostle Paul resolved to know nothing except the message of Jesus Christ. He was a learned man, schooled and versed in the pharisaical way of doing life. Still and yet, no amount of book learning could prepare him for the task that he was ordained to do. It would take something far greater, far grander and more spectacular to shape his heart for the kingdom mantle he would be asked to wear.
It would take an illumination from the heavenlies—a moment of brilliant awakening where the shattering truth of the “Word made flesh” would shatter the lie believed to the contrary.
Paul received his moment of brilliance, leaving him blinded by the revelation of just enough great and quite enough grand and over the top spectacular to forever alter his destiny. No longer would he rely on his formal training or his former understanding for doing life. Instead, his formal and his former would concede their pride to the new and humbled way of a crucified life.
The lifestyle that once earned Paul’s persecution and ardent disdain would now become the life that he would embody. And while we may not fully grasp the revelatory depth of Paul’s brilliant moment in the sun with the Son, if we know Jesus Christ as Lord, then we, too, have been called to a new and humbled way of living.
It’s a living that shifts our focus from me to Thee. At least it should. And if it hasn’t, if for some reason you’re still thinking that your me is bigger than your Thee, then may I suggest to you that a humbled walk under the brilliant light of God’s Son might serve you well this week? Not so that you can feel more guilty and more discouraged about your life as a Christian, but rather because it is time for the truth of Jesus Christ to take its rightful place in your heart and, consequently, in the way that you do life.
The way that you walk life. The way that you speak life and move through the paces of your day so that when you come to a week’s end, you do so being spent on behalf of something that matters rather than something that doesn’t.
Jesus Christ is that something. Everything else is just extra. Not necessarily bad, just extra. I don’t know about you, but I want my extra to be built upon something solid and real and lasting. Otherwise, when the extra fades, there’s nothing but empty. And friends, I’ve spent a whole lot of my life doing empty—investing my many words and my many doings in a way that literally says a whole lot more about me than him.
Time to grow up and to put the language of my childish ways behind me. Time to realize that my words are not my own. They were bought with a price, and therefore should be spoken according to the blood that was exacted for the freedom of their saying.
Thus, like the Apostle Paul, I resolve to know nothing else but Jesus Christ and him crucified. He is the knowing that has shattered my world with just enough great and quite enough grand and over the top spectacular so as to forever alter my destiny. He is the foundation that I want beneath my extra so that when the world comes knocking this week my responses are anchored in the truth of who he is rather than in the lie of thinking that I am anything apart from him.
Without Jesus, my words ring hollow. My life lives empty. My light burns dim. My time spends wasted. My story reads vacant. With him?
Words come to life. Lives live full and lights burn with the intensity of heaven’s illumination. Time spends wells and our stories become the stuff of lasting and kingdom significance. And that, my friends, is the worthy ending of a well lived week. May we each one, walk toward such a sacred conclusion with every step that we take and with every moment that is ours to write. Thus, I pray…
Help me keep focus, Lord, on the stuff that matters. Fill my heart and my mind with the foundational truth of your gospel, and keep me humbled with the witness of your crucified life. Forgive me for thinking that I am more, thus assigning you your less. I must become less, and you must become more. Be the anchor that holds my extra. Be the fire that burns my pride to ashes, and be the Spirit that blows them accordingly … in line with your will and for your fame alone. You are worthy of my words, Lord. Sanctify them toward your mighty and perfect end. Amen.
Copyright © February 2009 – Elaine Olsen
Friends, please be sure and join me all week! There will be some give aways incorporated into daily posts beginning tomorrow. Shalom.
