Faith is the journey...

I was having lunch with someone yesterday and we got to talking about how faith isn’t a destination,  it’s a journey. That actually, what happens in the here and now, today, tomorrow and the day after, is all part of how God grows us. That how you respond to a crisis in your life….that’s a significant event that God wants to use to shape you. That the opportunities that you face each day, they are all opportunities to see God’s Kingdom come a little bit more. Sometimes, Christians still see their salvation as their “ticket to heaven when they die”, and they struggle to see how their faith affects their everyday living.

Later, I found myself thinking about Jesus’ call to his disciples in Mark 1:17. “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Hear what Jesus says in those few words.

1)      “Come, follow me” - Faith is a response to Jesus that affects the course of our life and has practical outworkings in the everyday. Faith is not mere head knowledge….faith is living in the here and now. Faith is about orientating your life around and after Jesus.

2)      “I will make you” – The journey of faith is a journey of transformation brought about by Jesus in our lives. It is impossible to follow Jesus (at least the way He intended) and stay the same. Simply impossible. Jesus will shape our lives around His character and His priorities.

3)      “fishers of men” – The journey of faith involves new priorities…Jesus priorities….Kingdom priorities.

And then, when we stop and think about the first disciples…how what Jesus said here, played out in their lives, we can see that it was a life-long process. Every part of their life from that point on was Jesus working out in their lives what he invited them to respond to in Mark 1:17.

If you are a follower of Jesus, see your everyday life as sacred and significant.

Sacred, because Jesus cares about every part of your life…not just the Sunday part. How you parent, how you are as a friend, a spouse, a colleague, a neighbour…it’s all part of your life that Jesus is intimately involved with and concerned about.

And significant, because there is nothing in your life that Jesus cannot and does not use to bring about His transformation in you. There is not one part that is more important than another part.

So learn to ask questions of God. If you are going through a season or working through an issue where you are wondering what God is up to…ask Him!

And, in the words of Paul in Romans 12:1-2,

“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” (The Message)