#171

One Who Starts Where You Are

When I first started playing football, quite a while ago, the coach did not expect me to be an automatic superstar – which I never was. He did determine what I already knew and began to build on that. In other words he took me from where I was. This process is pretty common in every area of life. When it comes to a new job there is a learning curve. Brand new parents do not reach parenting expertise overnight. In each case one is taken from where they are and developed into what they need to be.

We need to remember this process in our attempts to bring our friends and neighbors into a relationship with God through Jesus. Of course Jesus is our prime example of using this process in dealing with people. “Come down out of that tree,” Zacchaeus, “I’m going home with you.” Jesus took him from where he was – a thief – to a recipient of salvation.

The woman caught in adultery was exactly that – an adulteress. “Go and sin no more.” She received mercy and it was exactly what she needed where she was.

How many of his disciples were hard working fishermen who became fishers of men? They couldn’t start out being fishers of men. They needed to grow.

If we are not careful we want to baptize super Christians without allowing time for growth and development. We think that they must be straightened out on everything, not limited to but including; eschatology, propitiation, however many acts of worship there are, what women can and cannot do, marriage-divorce-remarriage, communion at the beginning or end, etc.

I just remember the bottom line for the man born blind and healed by Jesus in John 9. “I was blind but now I see, (vs. 25).”  Isn’t that the bottom line for all of us? At one point we were totally blind, and now Jesus has made us see. Now that we can see, we can begin the process that Paul describes in Galatians 4:19.

               My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of
               childbirth until Christ is formed in you.

Spiritual formation is a process – a lifelong process. We have yet to become what we will be.

If you’ll understand who I am and where I am and help me see Jesus, I will become what I am supposed to be. If you make me begin by trying to be what I am supposed to eventually become, I will fall all over myself.

Start with people where they are.