for us Christians, but it’s not. The Gospel oughta set us Christians FREE to live and love with reckless abandon, but it doesn’t. Look around you. Do you see Christians who are seed cast on fertile soil that reproduce a hundredfold, even thirtyfold, even a few? Are we Christians contagious to the seculars around us? Do seculars want what we have? No. Whyzat?
Unbelief in us Christians. Jesus and His imputed performance are not everything to us. OUR performance is everything to us. Our human-wisdom-reliance feeds our obsession with our performance as Christians, spouses, parents, at work, in ministry. Jesus isn’t the biggest deal in our lives. WE are.
But unless Jesus grows us unusually-self-aware, we’ll be blind to the problem, imagining ourselves the good guys — good examples of Christians, instead of the great examples of bad examples we are. Pride, not humility. Self-deception, not self-awareness. And we won’t really understand Scripture unless we’re unusually-self-aware. Think Pharisees, who thought they understood Scripture. He who has a sense of having been forgiven little, today, loves little, today. Is not freshly undone, contrite, utterly in awe of Jesus.
What can we do? CONFESS. Instead of trying harder to do better, believe better. Don’t ask Jesus for more faith. That sounds so spiritual. CONFESS your unbelief in His sovereign reign, each time His Spirit opens your eyes to your unbelief, to your feeling ALONE with the problems you face, to see how unsatisfied you are with Jesus and His worthiness, wanting some of your own. And over time, I predict you’ll obsess less and less over the outside of your cup — working hard to project humility and graciousness to those around you, and you will become less and less the fraud you are. WE are. And Jesus will make us attractive to the seculars around us — other-worldly humble and other-worldly loving. We’ll have the authenticity of the early followers of Jesus who were contagious to their neighbors, relatives, work associates, enemies.
— Dave McCarty, GospelFriendships, not a great practicer of what he preaches, but baby steppin in a better direction because of the humbling, convicting work of Jesus’ Spirit in his life, that his human-wisdom HATES
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