Wholly Following – Living a Singular Life (part 1)

We are pondering together what it means to live a life that is devoted to following Christ wholly.   A life so devoted is experienced as we pursue the three-fold path of living a submitted, singular and sacrificed life.  In previous posts, we have considered the call to live a submitted life.  The submitted life is a life that is formed by God with faith as its central attitude of heart.  It creates within us an awareness of soul to promptings of the Hold Spirit, and it is cultivated by the practice of meditation upon Scripture.

Living a singular life is the second of the three dimensions of wholly following Christ.   The call to follow Jesus presents us with a single, integrated, life-defining purpose.  But, in our busy lives, we are so often pulled in many directions.   Our days become fragmented, disjointed and even segregated into various spheres.  We have a “school life” and a “work life” and a “family life” or a “social life” and maybe a “spiritual life” or a “church life.”  These different “parts” of our experience, though, are disconnected.  We lack a unifying flow in our daily walk.

Instead of living our lives in “parts” or “fragments,” Christ calls his followers to wholeness – to oneness.  He calls us to live a singular life. This kind of living is expressed by the words of King David when he wrote:  “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after:  that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple (Psalm 27:4 ESV).   The Apostle Paul also spoke of a similar desire as the central focus of his life’s direction.   “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14 ESV).

So, how are we to go about living this kind of life?  The answer lies in Christ himself.  He forms a singularity in our life in much the same way as we are formed into followers who live submitted lives.  This formation first shapes an attitude within our heart.  It is an attitude of love for God that pervades every dimension of our life.  By his gracious work within us, we begin to experience what it means to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength and all our mind.  Our love for Christ begins to be the thread that runs throughout each thought, word and activity of our day.  We begin to sense a connectedness within our life.  God’s love becomes the motivating force for each moment.

There is a wonderful example of the singular life that can be seen in a familiar story from the Gospel of Luke.  Jesus comes to dinner at the home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary.   Martha was an excellent host and was very busy preparing and serving a meal to Jesus and his disciples.  She was quite disturbed, however, when her sister (most likely younger than her, though we are not told) Mary was just sitting with Jesus listening to him.  Quite indigent, Martha confronts Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”  By his reply, Jesus exposes Martha as one living a fragmented life, while Mary embodies the life of singularity.   “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”  (Luke 10:38-42)

We are all too often like Martha living lives full of anxiety and troubled about many things. Our eyes, like Martha’s, are fixed on others and their failures to meet our expectations and desires. Christ, though, commends Mary and calls us to follow her by focusing our attention, our love, our desire upon him. Far from leading us to inactivity, such a singular attitude of heart will motivate us to live more purposefully for him in every dimension of our day.

Wholly Following – Living a Submitted Life (part 4)

We have been considering together what it means to live a life submitted to Christ and his will.   In our previous meditation, we stressed our need for God’s grace to keep us ever alert to the Spirit’s promptings in our daily walk through life.  “As the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness.’” (Hebrews 3:7-8).  Our prayer should be, “Lord, grant me ears to hear your words and a will to obey your commands.”  In answer to that prayer, God continues his work in us enabling us to be living, more and more, a submitted life.    

                            

There is a practice of life that God commands us to engage in order to cultivate both an attitude of our heart to believe his Word and an awareness of our soul to perceive the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  This practice of life is meditation upon the Scriptures.  “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:8-9 ESV).   Meditation upon God’s Word is more than merely reading or even studying the Bible.  Reading the Bible on a daily basis, as well as careful study of the Bible, are both excellent ways to encounter God’s Word, but through meditation upon the Scriptures  we submit our lives personally to what God has to say specifically to me right now in his Word.

Meditation may be understood through the imagery of a seed sown in good ground.  The seed is the Word of God.  The good ground is our heart and mind.  Silently, God works to cultivate the seed, watering it with his Spirit and warming it with his grace until it produces fruit.  God’s particular Word spoken into our lives is then embodied in our thoughts, our attitudes, and ultimately into our actions.  Our lives come to reflect, more and more, the image of Christ as we practice meditation upon the Scripture.  Through the practice of meditation we deny our own individualistic, selfish thoughts and ambitions.  Instead, we begin to yield ourselves to the will of God and, by the strength he gives us, we obey those specific words that he is speaking into our lives.

One of the best explanations of meditation upon Scripture is given by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book, Life Together.  Bonhoeffer writes, “In our meditation we ponder the chosen text on the strength of the promise that it has something utterly personal to say to us for this day and for our Christian life, that it is not only God’s Word for the Church, but also God’s Word for us individually.  We expose ourselves to the specific word until it addresses us personally.  And when we do this, we are doing no more than the simplest, untutored Christian does every day; we read God’s Word as God’s Word for us” (Life Together, 82).  So meditation upon Scripture consists in saturating our minds, our thinking with God’s Word as he speaks those particular passages upon which we meditate into our own lives.

Here’s an illustration of how meditation upon Scripture works.  This story comes from the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Bonhoeffer had been encouraged to travel to America in order to avoid being drafted into the German army.  When he arrived in New York in the summer of 1939, however, Bonhoeffer was very troubled in his spirit because he was thinking of his family members and friends back in Germany who were struggling to keep their fellow Christians loyal to Christ rather than following the ways of the Nazi Government led by Adolph Hitler.  

As Bonhoeffer was praying and meditating upon Scripture, God impressed his mind a verse from 2 Timothy 4, “Do your best to come before winter.”  He did not randomly find this verse.  Instead, the verse was a part of his regularly Bible readings for that day.  He pondered the passage as it stayed in his thoughts throughout the day.  Ultimately, this verse, along with other circumstances and concerns, prompted Bonhoeffer to return to Germany on the last ship that departed New York harbor before the beginning of the war.

God’s Word can speak into our lives in the same way.  Meditation upon Scripture is the habit of life that we must practice in order to submit our lives daily to the will of God.  It is the practice that is essential to denying ourselves if we truly desire to be Christ faithful disciples who are wholly following him.