I like the story about the boy who went to the store to buy a box of detergent.
The clerk asked him why he needed soap and he said it was to wash his dog. The clerk shared how the detergent was awfully strong to wash a dog but the boy assured him his dog was very dirty, therefore needed a strong soap.
A week later the boy was back in the store and the clerk asked him how his dog was and the little boy shared that his dog was dead.
The clerk said, “I knew that detergent was too strong, I’m sorry.” The boy replied, “I don’t think it was the soap. I think it was the rinse cycle that got him.”
Following Jesus can feel like the rinse cycle and often it feels like we might not survive.
It’s Monday as I write this and it’s my understanding a lot of pastors feel like quitting on Mondays and I wonder how many other Christians, after Sunday, wonder if this thing called Christianity is really working like they thought it would.
In his book The New Life, author Michael Green writes how the Christian life is like, “… riding a bike up a long hill … you are climbing and climbing and climbing and you keep thinking you will get to the top of this hill and then you will find some relief and coast down the other side of the hill … but you never get to the top of the hill, it just keeps winding back and forth and the hill keeps getting steeper and steeper.”
I was reading 1st Corinthians 3. The Apostle Paul says
The Apostle Paul says the Church at Corinth was full of baby Christians, “infants,” he called them carnal, “people of the flesh,” and not “spiritual.”
These were not compliments. It’s like it was Thanksgiving Day and the family is gathered to eat turkey and dressing and he sent some adults, grown men and women to the kid table.
While it might be easy to be offended by Paul’s honest assessment, these people should have seen this as a wake up call. They should have heard the alarm clock screaming, “Wake up!”
The reason this matters is the world and its ideas had crept into the church and the flesh was creating division, there was “jealousy and strife” in the church. (What’s new?) People were picking sides, “I like this guy. I like this woman.” Kind of like, “I like hymns” or “I like contemporary music.”
Paul’s response was, “What then is Apollos? What is Paul?”
In other words, who are these people you are making a big deal out of? They are nothing but servant leaders, waiters that God is using to help you.
These people or the things that we in our flesh value are nothing but tools that God uses to grow us in our faith and we should take that faith and glorify the Lord. In essence, Paul asked, “Did your Sunday school teacher die on the cross for you?
Did the pew or hymn book die on the cross for you?”
Of course the answer is no and the answer to being in the flesh is to place our eyes on Christ (take them off yourself and your preferences for the sake of unity). In today’s vernacular Paul says, “Get over yourself.”
It’s hard but we make it way harder than it has to be.
He told me to tell you that.
“He gives showers of rain to all people, and plants of the field to everyone.” (Zechariah 10:1)
He told me to tell you that
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