What is “Success” as a Christian?
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"My true life is the Anointed One and dying means gaining more of him.” Phil 1:21 The Passion Translation
On Sunday and Wednesday nights, you knew where you would find us. Three of us crammed into a 1970s Volkswagen Bug cruising to the “Full-Gospel” church in a neighboring town. Not old enough to drive, Sam and Carol would pick me up. The services were fantastic, beginning with Spirit-filled music, first the fast, praise type, and then the rich, worship choruses. “I love you Lord, and I lift my voice, to worship you, oh, my soul, rejoice…” Sitting here, singing, the love overflows for my Abba Father, even now.
Then a Bible-filled message. Soaking it all in, I filled notebooks with verses to look up later. My heart newly opened to God; I couldn’t get enough.
Then back into the Bug heading home, I peppered Sam and Carol with questions about Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God the Father, and the Bible. Talking for hours, they fed me like a young bird with its mouth gaping open starving for worms. Sending me home with tracts and other literature, it wasn’t unusual before I got out of the car, for them to hand me a cassette tape full of contemporary worship music.
With the friends I used to hang around, not able to relate to me anymore, I had lots of free time. After school with my sister at swim practice and my mom at work, I’d put in a tape. Laying on the dining room floor with my head between the stereo speakers, I’d turn it up full blast and sing!
I fell in love with the Bible. I’d always loved studying and now to have this book beyond all others was fantastic! Hiding away in my room I would sit at my desk unpacking this new treasure. Reading slowly, I’d take one verse at a time, watching for words that jumped out at me, looking up definitions, and following the trail of connected verses through the wonder of a concordance. His word was living and hour after hour would pass in the blink of an eye.
It was in those hours in scripture, with God’s presence surrounding me, that God helped me to understand life and renewed my mind. And in the other hours, laying with my head between the speakers, singing in worship with tears flowing that we fell in love, and He filled my heart.
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I imagine the apostle Paul’s experience was similar. After being thrown from his horse, when Jesus dramatically revealed himself to Paul on the road, God sent him to a hidden-away place for years. Before Paul ever did one thing for His kingdom, God renewed his mind with scripture and established their relationship in love, through one-on-one time with Him.
When Paul says, in his letter to the Philippians, “For me to live is Christ and die is gain,” he is expressing what every Christian who has experienced intimacy with God feels. There’s absolutely nothing like it.
As Pastor Davis, said so well in his message last Sunday,
“God wasn’t first useful to Paul. God was beautiful to him. The first half of success in our Christian life is being known by God and knowing Him. The second half is doing the work for His kingdom.”
It can be so easy to forget that the first thing God wanted when he created Adam and Eve was relationship. Inviting mankind to govern the world with Him came after His initial desire to “make man in His image” and “walk with him in the cool of the day.”
Kind of like marriage. Way back in 1985, when I met my husband and married him. We wanted children and were headed after the honeymoon to bible college and the mission field. I knew there was going to be a whole lot of blood, sweat, and tears to pay the bills, raise the kids, and do what God called us to in ministry.
But in dreaming about our life together my first thought wasn’t that now I would have someone to fix my car, do home repairs, work with me in the ministry and be a father to my children.
What I imagined first, was someone I could walk with side-by-side and enjoy until I was old and gray. Someone, I could truly know and could truly know me. Someone before, during, and after all the work to laugh with, watch sunsets, walk hand-in-hand on the beach, and talk to in my greatest joys and most painful sorrows.
More than a co-laborer to share the load, the closest of companions to share life.
After 40+ years of relationship with God, I think He feels the same way.
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How much of your life with God has been based on your love relationship versus your work for Him lately?
~ Lori