Not About Me

I have spent most of my life following after Jesus.  There have been times when I have wandered away from the road He walked, but somehow by God's grace, I have managed to get my feet back in the ruts again.  I remember from those beginning days that it was my intent to be like Jesus.  I read the gospels and with the intentionality of a young disciple set out to make my life like His life.  While there was nothing wrong with the desire, it was all about me and what I thought I could do.  It took me a long time to realize how little I could really do by just being determined.

 

Such is what I have always thought to be the problem with that old spiritual classic by Charles Sheldon entitled "In His Steps."   I read it as a boy and was captivated by it.  It seemed like something I should be about as a Christian.  Much later in my middle adult years someone came up with the WWJD movement (What Would Jesus Do).  The real problem with the Sheldon book and the later movement which captured the imagination of so many young believers was the way it focused on what the individual believer could do.  Both the book and movement asked too much.  We can desire to live like Jesus, but we cannot do it just  because it is the thing to do.

 

Maybe I am the exception to this rule.  It is just that I have learned that I am not able to do alone what I often want to do for Jesus.  Like the Apostle Paul I often know what the right thing is to do, I just have trouble doing it.  I have come to believe that we can become shaped in the image of Christ, but it only happens as the Holy Spirit is allowed to direct and control from within the heart.  What we cannot do alone, the Spirit can do through and in us.  Even in those unguarded moments when we are surprised with the unexpected,  the Spirit still can direct and enable us to respond according to the heart of Christ.  The trick is to live so that He  is allowed to do it.