I picked up the following example of the kind of transformation and conversion that takes place when you become a Christian from a friend of mine.
When a single man with a career as a fisherman falls in love, gets married and feels called to settle down and become a lawyer, he is, in a major way, switching the essential story lines of his life. He will have to rearrange his life to fit this new story.
No one would say that going to law school to get licensed as a lawyer was some sort of overzealousness or fanaticism. Few would think that by pledging to be faithful to the woman he loves that he was being overly exclusive.
No. He was simply taking appropriate and rational steps to fully live into his new life story once he made the decision to change from being a fisherman.
Becoming a Christian is a lot like this - it is a lot like you adopting a new life story. When you become a follower of Jesus you switch life stories, you enter the story of God. You no longer live for those things (whatever they were ... like fishing ... that used to define your life). And when the vision of a different life - life lived with Jesus in the Kingdom of God- is clear and compelling, when you have firmly decided to follow it, then you will begin to look for ways to implement it in your life.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
New Life Story
Excerpt from 2/3/09 email message from Sr. Pastor at St. Peter's Church, Mt. Pleasant, SC
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
what's wrong with fishing? ;) -pj
(...I will make you fishers of men.) Wow! going from fisherman to married lawyer is just *radical* on so many levels. Making any *one* of those changes by itself is radical - quitting fishing, taking a wife, going to school, deciding to study law...sheesh, this guy must have been struck by lightning and survived. No, I wouldn't all him fanatical, but radical, yes. Definitely.
Post a Comment