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 2)

If we desire to answer Christ’s call to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him today, in this very moment, we must depend wholly upon God’s promised work within and through us.  God is the one who forms faith as the attitude of our heart, and as he does, we begin to take the first steps of living a submitted life – a life examined by his Word and Spirit and fortified by Christ’s faithful mercy of forgiveness.  True self-denial can only occur under the authority of God’s Word.  The follower is called to submit himself and herself to its examining gaze. 

The Word searches and tests the hearts of its hearers. It is such submission to the Word that distinguishes a “different spirit” and enables the disciple to follow fully, to follow wholly.  Caleb yielded himself to the authoritative command to go into the land. He was firmly convinced of God’s purpose in giving his people the land.  Caleb’s confidence in the Word to which he submitted himself bolstered his exhortation to the people:   “The Lord is with us; do not fear” (Numbers 14:9).  Fear could easily have stalled Caleb, but by yielding himself to obey the Word, he was enabled to go into the land, and he called others to follow his path.  

The same is true for every follower of Christ.  We begin that journey by submitting our entire being to the full examining gaze of God’s Word.  His authoritative Word reveals the truth about who we are and shows us our desperate need for Christ to save us, to make us whole in himself, and to grant us ears that hear, eyes that see and hearts that obey his Word.  Only as we live submitted to daily examination under the scrutiny of God’s Word of Truth do we become ones who are wholly following after Christ.

Examinations are common place in human experience.  When we are young and going to school, testing is a regular occurrence.   From weekly quizzes to annual standardized tests, assessments are part and parcel of the educational experience.  But, it is not just in school that testing has a prominent role.  One visit to your physician will most likely result in a battery of diagnostic tests to disclose the source of an existing aliment or expose indicators of some impending disease. 

Even if you shy away from a doctor’s examining eye, you will still encounter tests as prerequisites to many of life’s routine activities. No one is granted a license to operate an automobile without successfully passing an examination.  And, nearly every professional or certified technician must achieve a passing score on a licensing exam before being qualified to practice a profession or to ply a trade.   Indeed, it would not be too much of a stretch to say that life, in its many stages, is all about testing.

And what is true today was also true in ancient days.  One of the most recognized wise men of ancient Greece was Socrates.  In his famous speech defending himself against the charge of corrupting the youth of Athens, Socrates proclaimed, “The life which is unexamined is not worth living!”  Socrates spoke the truth that we as followers of Christ must likewise heed.  So, by faith we yield our lives daily, moment-by-moment, to God’s examining Word by the promptings of his Holy Spirit who indwells each and every follower.  We'll next explore how God cultivates an awareness of our soul to these promptings of the Spirit.

Wholly Following ~ The Pathway of Discipleship (part 3)

Jesus calls his disciples to follow him on his journey to Jerusalem – to taking up the burdens and sins of others.  Ultimately, his journey is along a path to death, yet it is a death with the assured hope of the resurrection.  His call, then, is to live a sacrificed life.  We offer-up ourselves for others just as he offered-up himself us.  Living this sacrificed life is the goal of wholly following. 

We may think about discipleship as a daily walk along a three-fold path wholly following Christ our Lord.  It is the path of living a submitted life, a singular life, and a sacrificed life.  The three-fold path embodies the whole life of a follower of the Son of God who himself lived a full human life and died a full human death.  He died for us not only to accomplish our redemption from eternal separation from God, but also to enable us to pattern our life and death in this present world after His.  He enables this wholly following in the here and now because he is our life – Christ in you the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). 

When Christ spoke his call to discipleship he spoke not only the particular path that lay before him, but also the pattern for everyone who wholly follows after him.  It was the path of Peter as the risen Jesus foretold it to him when he met Peter on the shore of Galilee.  Jesus said “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go” (John 21:18).  John explains that by these words Christ showed “by what kind of death he was to glorify God” (21:19).  Peter, as one of the first followers of Jesus, lived a life and died a death that was both patterned after Christ.

The path Jesus walked in his life and in his death was also the pattern of Paul’s life.  God foretold the pattern of Paul’s life in his commission to Ananias, the person God used to convey his call to Paul: “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:15b-16).  Paul himself passed on that same destiny to his protégé Timothy when he wrote, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12).    

Wholly Following ~ The Pathway of Discipleship (part 2)

God became fully human in order that humans could become fully men and women bearing His image - the Imago Dei.  Christ now calls and enables all those who follow him to live responsibly in the concrete realities of life in the here and now.    As we ponder this very present reality, we must ask yet another question: Where do we hear this call from God? 

The call to live such a life comes to us in the words of Jesus when he said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).  It is a call to live wholly following after him.  It is a call to live a submitted life as we deny ourselves; to live a singular life as we take up his cross daily; and to live a sacrificed life as we follow him on the road that leads to death upon that cross.  Christ calls the disciple to deny himself.  We deny ourselves by submitting to Christ and his Word. 

We subject ourselves to his examining eye.  We pray, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and see if there be any evil way in me.”  God must search us.  We cannot search ourselves.  We cannot examine ourselves.  We would too easily find excuses and justifications for our choices. 

Only by examining ourselves by his Word and as the Spirit of God wields its discriminating blade, sharper than any two-edged sword as it discerns the thoughts and intents of our hearts, (Hebrews 4:12), will we begin to live the submitted life – a life of denial to self.  Through living a submitted life we begin wholly following.

Christ calls the disciple to take us his cross. We take up our cross by recognizing that the cross must mean to us what it meant to Christ.  It is an instrument of death, indeed our place of death, but not merely a death to our self-centered, self-focused life, but a death of the follower for others.  The cross was the fulfillment of Christ’s work on earth -- the work that the Father had given him to do – the giving up of his life for others. 

The cross was the sign-post that marked the way that Christ walked.  It displayed his willingness to do the will of his Father.  So the cross that we take up is for us the singular emblem of the one thing that the follower of Christ desires, and that is: to do the will of God.  Living this singular life takes us to the core of wholly following.

Christ calls the disciple to follow him.  When a person instructs you to follow, he knows the path that must be taken.  So, the question must be asked: where was Jesus going when he issued this call?  The answer is found in the preceding verse: "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised." (Luke 9:22)  Christ knew the destiny that he had been born to fulfill.  

With that knowledge, he calls upon his disciples to follow him on that journey to Jerusalem – to taking upon himself the burdens and sins of others – ultimately, to death with the assured hope of the resurrection.  His call is for us to live a sacrificed life just as he offered-up himself us.  Living this sacrificed life, then, is the goal of wholly following.   

On Being a Christian Professor at Handong

What does it mean to be a Christian Professor at Handong?  This question poses an even more profound inquiry.  What does it mean to engage one’s profession in a Christianly manner?  Within the context of Handong, the question could also be asked, what does it mean to be a Christian student here? Or, what does it mean to be a Christian administrator at Handong?  How does the reality of our life in and through Christ impact the way in which we serve others in our respective callings?

In each of our callings, the life and teachings of Jesus should be the rule and guide showing us what it means to be a Christian who teaches, who studies, and who leads and administers.  Jesus’ teachings about leadership are especially applicable to being a professor who is truly seeking to follow Christ’s example.  When his disciples were bickering about who would be the greatest among them, Jesus said, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10: 42- 45, ESV).

A Christian professor should embody the reality of the life of Christ by serving his students rather than dominating them from some position of claimed cultural or intellectual authority.  Christ turned his disciples’ view on “being the greatest” completely upside down.   Some have even described the “Kingdom of God” that Jesus both proclaimed and lived as “The Upside-Down Kingdom” It’s true!  To follow Christ authentically in our callings, especially in the vocation of a professor at a university such as Handong where Jesus is claimed as Lord, we should be living a life that runs against the flow of this world, and dare I say it, against the flow of every human culture. 

The flow of this world says that one who is in a position of power and authority in the eyes of others (i.e. the professor/teacher) should readily assert his position through control.  The flow of Christ, to the contrary, seeks to serve and to be at the service of those to whom we have been charged to teach.  The Apostle Paul, whom many regard as the greatest teacher of the Church, embodied Christ’s life of service to others.  He did not teach in order to get something from his students.  Rather, in response to God’s gracious call, he served others through his teaching.

Paul lived the reality of the “Upside-Down Kingdom.”  We see it clearly portrayed in his letter to the believers at Thessalonica. “We never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness.  Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ.  But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.  So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (I Thessalonians 2:5-8).

Because this sort of self-sacrificing service is true to the life of one who lives in and through Christ, a professor who professes to follow Jesus at a university where God is claimed to be in the center of all things (or at least in the center of its name) should be yielding his life for his students rather than demanding that students give their time and lives at his convenience.  This means that the professor will be so submitted to the sovereignty of God in her service to students that she will allow her schedule to be interrupted because the needs of others are viewed as the professor’s most important task.  We serve the best by giving our lives to listen to and seek to understand the needs of our students.

Through yielded service and a readiness to give of his time and attentiveness, the professor who draws his life from Christ at Handong should be not only led to teach his students in a professional and scholarly manner but also to live a life before and for his students that authentically demonstrates the love of Christ by sharing and even bearing their burdens.  “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).  A professor can only bear those burdens he knows, and so he must take the time to get to know what weighs down his students so that he might be of some measure of help in lifting them up.

If our students would learn anything of lasting value from us as Christian professors at Handong, then may it be this – that we live in constant acknowledgement of our need for Christ’s mercy and forgiveness and that we then seek to be professors who are serving, giving and bearing them through this time together here as we are continuing to be formed by the work of Christ’s Spirit into the whole persons that he has designed, called and equipped us all – professors, students, and administrators – to be.

Living to Teach Rather Than Teaching to Live

As I have been pondering the possibility of returning to teach at Handong University in Korea, I have been revisiting the Analects of Confucius.  One in particular is especially applicable to anyone who senses that the calling upon their life is a call to teach.

Of his own role as a teacher, Confucius said, "For anyone who brings even the smallest token of appreciation, I have yet to refuse instruction."


This responsibility to the one seeking instruction was again impressed upon me when I read this morning these verses in The Wisdom of Solomon: "The beginning of wisdom is the most sincere desire for instruction, and concern for instruction is love of her."  So when one is met with a request from those who are sincerely seeking instruction, the one who has a call to teach must give the most deliberate consideration to responding.


This type of thinking challenges me to confront the question:  Do you teach to live or do you live to teach?  Another way to put the question would be to examine whether I am accept the offer to teach primarily and principally as a means to make a living, or do I view the opportunity to teach as an open door through which God is directing me to proceed in faith depending upon him and him alone to provide for my earthly needs?


Am I taking no thought for tomorrow, anxious over what I will eat or where I will live or how I will be clothed?  Am I willing to follow on trusting the one who is my Guide, not only to make the way clear, but also to provide all that will be needed for me to progress along that way?  Here Bonhoeffer instructs: "The only way to win assurance is by leaving to-morrow entirely in the hands of God and by receiving from him all we need for to-day" (Discipleship, 178).

  

"Watch and Pray"

I find myself in a time of waiting.  As I ponder the options that are before me, I continue to wait on the responses of others to clarify what opportunities are presently open to me.  While prayer is always essential to the one who seeks to follow Christ, I'm realizing even more how necessary it is during these times of waiting.

Bonhoeffer's comments on the petition "Thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth" are particularly poignant as I seek to practice living a submitted, singular and sacrificed life.  He writes:  "In fellowship with Jesus his followers have surrendered their own wills completely to God's, and so they pray that God's will may be done throughout the world.  No creature on earth shall defy him.  But the evil will is still alive even in the followers of Christ, it still seeks to cut them off from fellowship with him; and that is why they must also pray that the will of God may prevail more and more in their hearts every day and break down all defiance" (Discipleship 166).

Psalm 40 echoes this theme -- "my delight is to do your will, O Lord!" -- and so may my heart and mind!  Show me your way, O Lord; lead me in the path you have set out ahead of me.  Again, Bonhoeffer speaks to the heart of the matter:  "It is always true of the disciple that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, and he must therefore "watch and pray" (Discipleship 170).

Practicing Mindfulness

A few weeks ago I learned that a teaching opportunity that I had been told would be opening for me here in the next academic year will, in fact, not be opening.  The door to that opportunity seems to be closing or is actually completely closed now.  I had been planning on that position, but now it appears that I have a much greater need to practice daily mindfulness rather than living so much for an imagined future whose fulfillment was and is completely out of my hands.

In the midst of this time of searching for guidance and reflection upon my calling to teach, I have started to read Thich Nhat Hanh's little book, The Miracle of Mindfulness.  Thich Nhat Hanh had a substantial impact upon Martin Luther King, Jr.  Dr. King even nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership in the movement for peace in Vietnam during the 1960's.

I was first introduced to the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh by my good friend and colleague, John Han, when I served with him on the faculty of Missouri Baptist University.  As I have read, I have been challenged by Hanh's insights in to living a whole life.  In this little book, he writes: "Mindfulness is the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves. . . it is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life" (21).

Thich Nhat Hanh's instruction on the practice of mindfulness echoes the theme of "single-mindedness" that pervades the New Testament.  More than merely a self-discipline, single-mindedness is very much a gift of the Holy Spirit as he is at work forming within each follower of Jesus the mind of Christ.  Paul exhorts the disciple of Christ to do whatever your hand finds to do heartily as unto to the Lord (Colossians 3:23) and to do all things to the glory of God.  This is practicing mindfulness.

May I be living more wholly in the fullness of my present calling today that I may know and practice such mindfulness in each moment that is granted to me.