I used to think I was a Christian…

As a church pastor I had the unenviable task of coming up with a new, fresh, "message from God" every week that would be practical, educational and life-transforming. It was easy to get into a certain routine. Pick a portion of the scriptures, the Book of Acts, the Gospel of Matthew, or whatever. Read several translations of the passage, research several commentators, think of several illustrations, then synthesize all of that material into 30-40 minutes of oratory.

After doing this week-in and week-out for a while one finds the commentators that are appealing and the illustrations that are familiar to convey to the congregation. Over the course of weeks, that turned into months, it was possible to analyze the impact of all of these messages. I could tell if I was being practical by the number of people dozing off in the first 10 minutes of my presentation. I could observe, up close and personal, the transforming effect of my words.

This sort of analysis frequently left me depressed. If I preached on fidelity, inevitably some one fell into adultery. If I preached on ethics, someone got caught lying and cheating. If I preached on grace, the congregation seemed to become more judgmental. At least, that’s how it felt during my darker moments.

Eventually my tenure as a pastor came to an end and I got back to "working" for a living. I am a lawyer by trade, and I had been saying for a few years that if I needed to, I could get a job easily. That fall, it became clear, I needed to get a ‘real’ job. Three faxed resumes and one interview later, I found myself working 60 miles from home on the other end of an hour-long train ride five days a week. One nice thing about train rides, is that you can do something else while you are traveling. The possibilities are endless. Learning a foreign language, writing a book, prayer and meditation, these are all possibilities.

For four months, however, I had been reading Dallas Willard’s the Divine Conspiracy. Let me say this, I have heard Dr. Willard speak several times in person, and every time have been challenged to the core of my being. He speaks about spiritual discipline, and being a student of Jesus Christ, and righteousness, from a clearly established philosophical and theological high ground.

He also brings his own shortcomings to bear on the struggle that we all face in truly becoming all that God desires us to be. On those train rides I had plenty of time to reflect on the wear and tear on my soul from my time as a pastor and from being involved in the closure of a church.

I had the opportunity to examine my own motivations and discovered that they weren’t very good. The desire to be well-thought-of is not a good motivation for being a church leader. It can quickly lead to disappointment. You might ask, why did it take so long for you to read Dr. Willard’s book? I would reply, because it was one of the most practical, educational and life-transforming experiences of my Christian walk.

It was so rich in content and fresh insight into the life of the kingdom of the heavens, that I can only have so many of my paradigms shifted at a time. Dr. Willard exposes the inherent beauty, simplicity and authority of Jesus’ profound teachings contained in the Sermon on the Mount. He demonstrates the unity of thought and focus that Jesus brought to this discourse. He outlines the truly kingdom life that will come to those who become students of Jesus.

The fresh insight for me is that all the religious upbringing, instruction and practice that I had experienced up to that point in my life had somehow missed the actual point. I was moved by the idea that God has conspired to recreate me, to renew me and to restore my soul. It’s amazing that I had struggled for so long to perform in just the right way, to be pleasing to God, and all along he was simply waiting for me to cease my struggle.

I used to think I was a Christian, because of what I believed, how I behaved and perhaps, because of how my associates thought of me. After reading Dr. Willard’s book, during those few months I have realized that this was beside the point. God has chosen me, and all of us who wish to be chosen, for fellowship with him, for an eternal kind of life that can begin right now. As a student of Jesus Christ I can learn to live a life that has peace and joy despite my circumstances, today. I can have my inheritance in Christ, now, every day.