The heart is a slow learner

I owe an immeasurable amount to human teachers, the ones I’ve heard and the ones I’ve read; but my heart only begins to believe things if it hears them from the Spirit, Who has drawn as close as can be to my heart, as Jesus promised.  

This is how I tend to think: ‘If God likes what I do, I don’t have to worry about what someone else thinks.’   But I see that I am selective about thinking like that.  I wouldn’t dream of applying such thinking to those I love and respect - that’s a bit of a give-away!  It’s obviously not a godly principle, but rather self-serving.  To cut to the chase, I love those whom I feel loved by, and ignore those whom I feel I’m not loved by.   But these days, God is correcting my course, adjusting my sails a bit so they can pick up breezes from other directions.

Jesus taught this: ‘Love your enemies’.  He added no reservations or conditions.  He loved people, all the time, and most of all as He faced the Cross.  He let His enemies do their will.  Although His Mother and other companions were with Him on the road to Golgotha, I believe He went ahead alone without the reassurance of their comprehension, with a faith unique to Himself that to do so would ‘draw all men’ to the Father and to Himself.  

So does that still work in the same way?  It must!  Serving and loving our enemies, adversaries and uncomprehending strangers is what may free them to find salvation: which means their reconciliation with the Father and their resurrection to life.  Jesus always intended His followers to do this as well, once He’d gone ahead first in living out love to the unimaginable extent of His humiliation, torture and death.  St Paul calls this ‘sharing in the sufferings of Christ’, and teaches that it is a vital part we are to play, as co-workers in the healing and salvation of the world.

Yes, Jesus has finished His one, perfect sacrifice; but that opened the way for us to live like He did. Unless we co-work with Him to do the same things He did, others will not be reached by the Kingdom of God.  It’s not at all enough just to tell people about what Jesus did, and say that they are saved if they believe the story.  My life, and their lives, are intended to change and look like Jesus’ life, and we are intended to become inspired by the same faith which once upon a time, now so long ago, He was the only Person on earth to have.  But no longer.