I’m just going to say it: Sometimes theological teaching can be really abstract and not all that helpful in our day to day lives. Each of us has real responsibilities, to-do lists, schedules, and if you’re like me, I often feel that a lot of teaching about the Bible seems to have very little intersection with my “real” life. If I’m not careful, though I may not admit it, sometimes this can get to the point that I feel like God is not too involved in my day to day life. I begin to believe that God belongs to some other, abstract level of reality that I only think about at church—one that has nothing to do with my everyday life.*
Commenting on the Church, theologian Dallas Willard said, “Our usual ‘gospels’ are, in their effect . . . nothing less than a standing invitation to omit God from the course of our daily existence.” What I understand Willard saying is that what is taught in most churches today almost exclusively focuses on how we can get to heaven, or in many Seventh-Day Adventist circles, what the end of the world is going to look like (eschatology). While these teachings are good, and often true, whenever they are the primary emphasis, they can cause us to forget how God actually wants to affect our daily lives.
The way of Jesus was never supposed to just be “three easy steps to get to heaven.” While part of Jesus’ mission was to invite us into eternal life through faith in Him, Jesus also came to invite us into what Dallas Willard calls the, “eternal kind of life.” In other words, Jesus came to give us the opportunity to have a certain quality of life in our here and now, everyday lives. This life is available to us whether we are rich or poor, young or old, single or married, or any other distinction.
So in the next few weeks I want us to explore this question together: “What does it mean to follow Jesus in our daily lives?”
The Three Chairs
I was only a few weeks into grad school whenever one of my professors, Dr. Allan Walshe, pulled out three chairs in front of our class. Seeing our confused faces, he began to explain in his silky Australian accent what each chair meant to our spiritual lives. “The first chair is what you do for God,” he said, “This chair represents things like helping others, serving in church, and even how much time you spend with God.” He continued, “The second chair is how you love God. This chair represents your feelings, thoughts and overall disposition to God as a Person.” He moved on to the final chair, saying, “This last chair is how you see God, in other words, your understanding of who He is.”
Dr. Walshe went on to explain that while most churches often focus on the first chair (what we do for God), and some even on the second (how we love God), it is actually the third chair (how we view God) that determines the other two. Put another way, you will not want to love God or do anything He wants you to do if in your heart you believe He has a judgemental, petty, unfair character. Sure, you might try to do what He says, acting out of fear of some kind of punitive measure, but it won’t be out of a genuine desire. Our view of God determines whether or not we love Him or follow His guidance for our practical lives.
It did not take long for Dr. Walshe’s guidance to challenge me. As I started to analyze my “three chairs,” I began to see that for much of my life, I had been serving a “god” that was not reflective of the God of love who reveals Himself in the Bible. Somewhere along the way I had come to believe that He expected me to be perfect in everything I did. This made loving God difficult, as I saw Him as always being disappointed in my performance (or lack thereof). It also made the things I did for God (like worship, or other kinds of serving) difficult as I usually had the anxiety that it wouldn’t be good enough for Him. I realized that I had a third chair problem. Even years into my relationship with Jesus, I needed to ask myself, “Who is God? Who am I?” all over again.
Have you ever been there?
Those questions opened up a new journey for me, one that I’m still on. They challenge me to look into Scripture to discover who God is, rather than relying on my feelings, or only what others have told me about Him.
Before we dive deeper into how we can better follow Jesus in our day to day lives, it’s crucial that we begin by asking ourselves, “Who is Jesus?” In other words, “What is He like? What is He about? What’s His attitude toward me?” If we want our actions, and our attitude towards Him to shift, we must first challenge ourselves to have an honest look at who He is and what He’s about.
How?
Everything practical that we will be talking about in the next few weeks will be of little use if you don’t know the character of the One making the invitation.
In the first lesson of his popular Bible study series [truth] Link, Ty Gibson says that the “true north,” or the point of departure, for his entire study is “God is love.” The same is true of our journey together. Discover (or rediscover) this for yourself this week:
Read Romans 5, asking yourself, “Who is God? Who am I?”
If you want to dive deeper, go to truthlink.org, create a free account, and read the first lesson of Ty Gibson’s course.
If you would like to pray or talk with someone, feel free to email me at ianreyes567@gmail.com, or another member of the Canyon Creek Project team at hello@canyoncreekproject.com.
Looking forward to seeing y’all soon,
-Ian
*These ideas were brought to my attention in Dallas Willard’s, The Divine Conspiracy