Renovaré… Whatcha Thinkin’??

Following is an easy thing… IF you keep your eyes fixed on what you are following. Me? I think I may have attention deficit disorder. I am always looking around at the scenery. Everything seems to catch my attention and fancy.

As I write this I am sitting in a booth at Chick-fil-A. I want to write. I want to communicate, connect and convey the ideas that have been rolling through me about following Jesus. I want to tell you about how Jesus is worth following because he was going somewhere to make a difference (everywhere he went.)

I want to tell you how that I am learning to follow Jesus in prayer by watching how he interacted with the Father. His confidence in the Father’s love enabled him to accept people, care about people and be with people without regard to himself.

However, instead of flowing in that train of thought and having the focus of Jesus to my task, I am looking at the Wal-Mart sign across the street. It is the same sign I have seen for years, so why look at it? It is NOT changing. Because sometimes static is more secure than the moving, unstable ecstatic.

In following Jesus’ path there is always the ecstatic. There is the constant change and upheaval and turmoil that spiritual life brings when it is pursued. Spiritual quest has a natural enemy and a supernatural enemy. The natural enemy is self – our desires, appetites, wants, doubt, fears. The supernatural enemy is our adversary – Satan, the enemy of our souls. He, and evil in our world, harass us, challenge us, attack us, know us, and are committed to the destruction of faith and trust in relationship with Jesus.

However, there is one word of truth that will epitomize the movement toward following, and fighting the good fight called faith. That word is repent.

Jesus’ cousin, John, who came to notoriety as a preacher in the wilderness of the Judean region, carried this theme as his primary message. The scriptures relate, “John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” This word, repent/repentance, carried a meaning with it of changing course, or changing paths, even changing direction.

Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament words, calls this the ‘afterthought’ of decision to follow Jesus. Wikipedia begins to let us understand the picture more clearly. Meta (from Greek: μετά = “after”, “beyond”, “with” and Nioa = thinking.)

Following Jesus incorporates repentance. Jesus said to his followers, ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is here, now.” Jesus is saying, “You are led with your thoughts. When you abandon your thoughts and embrace my thoughts then your thinking changes. As your thinking changes, your life changes – not selfishly, but in, with and though relationship with me.”

It is an ongoing message from God’s heart to human reality. We become twisted (wicked) in our thoughts and cannot discern the truth or the long-term consequences of things for ourselves. We trend toward being evil (out for self with the absence of care for others) and we drift from the way of God we were created to live in. The Prophet Isaiah, speaking on behalf of God, gave us these words in Isaiah 55 -

Let the wicked forsake his way
and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

So, I choose to follow, change, repent…. Stay away from what is always the same and reach forward to what is moving and alive and brings potential. There is something to be said for not staring at the Wal-Mart sign that will stay put, but rather, as ancient texts of Scripture suggest…

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. (Hebrews 12, New Living Translation)

Paul reminds us of this in his letter to Christ-followers in Greece, when he writes…

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard,  and no mind has imagined
what God has prepared for those who love him.”

But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets. No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us… “Who can know the Lord’s thoughts?   Who knows enough to teach him?”  But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.

So, what do you think?? I think I need Renovaré ….a makeover, from the inside-out, in my thinking. It begins with what we are watching, so don’t get distracted.

~ by phil underwood on 13 June, 2008.