# 35 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: There is a Grand Canyon between you on your best day and Jesus on his worst. Being “Christlike” is a fallacy. Genuine Christianity has never been about imitation or method acting.
A Grand Canyon of Difference
Take honest inventory of your spiritual life, and you’ll realize there is a Grand Canyon between you and Jesus. Even on your best day, when you’ve dressed up, said your prayers, had a devotional time, listened to Christian music, and meditated on God—you cannot produce the Spiritual resource needed to live the Christian life. That resource is Christ Himself, through the person and power of the Holy Spirit.
Yes, dear friend, even dear brethren, there is a Grand Canyon between you and Jesus, the gulf formed by the differing sources of power relied upon for life.
Allow me to introduce Watchman Nee (cover your toes)
Watchman Nee, a Chinese National and Christian author, in his book Not I, but Christ, stirred controversy when he wrote this:
“If you can teach a dog to be a Christian, then you can teach a man to be a Christian. There is none who can live the Christian life but Christ.”
God is not seeking a display of my Christ-likeness, but a manifestation of His Christ.
~ Watchman Nee
and finally this:
We think of the Christian life as a ‘changed life’ but it is not that. What God offers us is an ‘exchanged life,’ a ‘substituted life,’ and Christ is our Substitute within.
~ Watchman Nee
Follow the links provided to learn more. His writing will change your view of the Christian life.
Christianity as strength training
In my 35 years as a believer, I’ve seen many good-hearted people and many well-meaning preachers speak and act as if being a good Christian is like going to the gym. Through your disciplined efforts; you get stronger and stronger. Soon, you can do more and more reps. Gradually, you get fit; you lose weight. You keep working at it, persevering to put in the effort to get the results, feeling the smile of God, and being congratulated by your fellow-believers for all your dedicated, inspiring work. Work hard enough and your life gets better. But, it’s hard, relentless work. Friend, I’ve been you.
The gym for Christians is church attendance and prayer and bible study and meetings and maybe tithing or doing some good works. It’s stopping drinking and smoking and cussing and listening to bad music and hanging out with bad people (any non-Christians). It is voting the right way and saying the right things and replacing the magnets on your refrigerator with bible verses.
Is this as good as it getsuntil we die and go to Heaven
But it is also mingled with failure and discouragement. It is struggling with habitual sin, and backsliding and repenting, and keeping up appearances and attending services—but still being defeated. So you grit your teeth and say, “God is Good.” But you can’t escape the gnawing, empty feeling that there has to be more to the Christian life than what you’re experiencing. And all the while, you blame yourself for your lack of “progress”, and feel guilty for letting God down. But you hang in there knowing that Heaven will be worth all the hard work and effort.
The typical idea suggests that one can become a “strong Christian”. In some circles, you’ll actually hear that term applied to particularly zealous and serious examples. The truth is—when we are weak, then we are strong, for then Christ’s power can rest upon us. God will let us be as strong as we want to be, but God is attracted to weakness.
That’s why He likes me so much. 😉
(And will be attracted to you the same way; as soon as you embrace your weakness as I have my own.)
The Canyon separates Jesus from self-empowered fiasco
I say, there’s a Grand Canyon between us and Jesus if that’s the extent of it.
It is either Christ manifesting Himself in and through us, or it is a human fiasco dressed up in church clothes saying churchy things. Many of the things we try to do for God are performed, not by the Spirit, but by self conjured effort, relying on our own “wisdom” and willpower, not on the power of God. Perhaps that’s why we see little of it in our day.
What God wants done by us, He will do in and through us. Let’s not confuse that into thinking that anything we say or do in the Name of Jesus is done by Jesus. It’s just not.
Please don’t take offense. If you understand me correctly, and accept my motivation for writing this, you’ll embrace the living Christ to manifest Himself in and through you. The true Christian life has always been about who Jesus is and what He is in us, not about you or me. He’s the only one who can live the life He’s called us to live, let’s trust Him to do just that, shall we? Because there is a Grand Canyon between you and Jesus.
Hampton Coliseum: This Hell in a Bucket became my Altar of Remembrance.
Like the Old Testament figures who faced a crisis, had an encounter with God, and erected a pillar of stones to commemorate the place, this day on the calendar is my altar of remembrance.
Today marks 35 years since I was lost enough to let myself be led, to borrow words from my favorite Rich Mullins song, Hard to Get.
Two questions and one answer forever changed the trajectory of my life and have given me these thirty-five years, quite literally, on the house.
Question one: Are you having that much fun?
Question two: How much are you worth?
Answer: God thinks you’re worth the death of His Son.
Thirty-five years in, and I’m as amazed today at how and where Jesus found me as in the hour I first believed.
I’m certain many people are looking for God. They just don’t know they’re looking for Him.
Many, like my 21-yr-old self, think they’ve already found Him. He’s the all-inclusive, Grand Cosmic Guru running everything, hidden in everything, maintaining everything, right? He’s the One conducting the Acid Tests. He’s the One encouraging you to Be Here, Now. He’s the one that’s totally cool with you as long as you don’t hurt anyone else, right? Not considering that a life spent groping around in a dark room when there’s a light switch on the wall, hurt’s everyone else…right?
And believing they already know Him at least as well if not better than the slick, well-dressed TV professionals; carnival hawkers pitching a snake-oil version of God, they aren’t looking in the traditionally right places. Because, face it, most of those places are oh-so-stuffy-and-judgmental, and frankly,…dead.
They know instinctively God must be bigger than that. And so, rejecting the organizational part of religion, they feel themselves adrift, looking for something in the next port, the next experience, the next drug.
Bobby Weir, 3-19-86 singing the lyric that led to the Question one. You don’t have to be a televangelist to be used by God.
They can’t say why they’re pushing every envelope, testing every limit, hopping the fence at every boundary. Like me, they don’t know why they think every door they open, will be THE DOOR of the universe. They just know there must be more to all of this than what the world is selling.
Let me just say, I feel ya!
But sometimes in all your manic searching you can get yourself so inextricably tangled up and lost, that you’re ready to hold out your hands and take a Day-Glo green pamphlet from a hippy chick you’ll never meet again, read it, and like a snake shedding it’s skin, walk away a different person.
The switch clicks, the Light comes on, and you get found by the One who has been holding you in His outstretched hands. And the only appropriate words, even thirty-five years later, are simply, Thank You.
The outside of the tract said, How Much Are You Worth? God thinks you’re worth the death of His Son, was written inside the tract…with an image like this one.
A few years ago, I wrote out this version of my testimony . I re-read it this morning. It could benefit from some edits, and it’s kind of long, but if you have any interest in whether or not Jesus goes to Grateful Dead shows, it’s there for the reading.
One of my favorite NT passages is in Luke chapter 8. Jesus is with his disciples and decides to go to ”the other side” of the Sea of Galilee. They get into a boat and off they sail. Jesus falls asleep in the boat on the way across, leaving the navigation in the hands of accomplished fishermen, many of whom have grown up around this lake and made their livelihoods from it.
But, a storm of high wind comes down on the lake, sunken as it is in the topography of the region, and the boat begins to fill with water, threatening to swamp the boat miles from shore.
These seasoned fishermen, who have undoubtedly been in boats during storms on this body of water before, decide that now is a good time to wake up the carpenter from his nap to tell him, Master, we perish.. And the carpenter from Nazareth rebuked the wind and the waves so that the lake became calm again. Then, in my favorite part of the story, he turns to the disciples and says, ”Where is your faith…”?
Luke’s narrative says, ”then they were afraid…”.
Excuse me?
Then…they were afraid?
They must have been at least troubled, if not outright terrified, to have awakened Jesus to tell him the boat was filling with water and they were going to drown. And now that the wind and water are calm again these seasoned fishermen are afraid?
You’d think that the act of waking him up would have shown their faith. It seems that Jesus would have had no need to ask where their faith was. They called on him, after all. But apparently, they had done so just so he wouldn’t sleep through the tragedy. Clearly, they were astonished by what he had done to save them. They sure hadn’t expected this. Now they are more afraid of the solution than they had been of the problem.
Not exactly fear inducing, eh? Or is it?
I try to see my place in this story. This small vessel is so tossed by wind-whipped waves out on the open lake that it is taking in water, yet Jesus is asleep? That would have been one heckuva rolling, bucking little boat, but he was undisturbed. Would that have inspired me…or angered me? Would I have remembered that at the start of the journey he had said, ”Let us go to the other side” and since we weren’t yet at the other side the journey wasn’t over? Would I have thought he didn’t care? (In another gospel, they did think that). When he finally does wake up to calm the situation just by speaking, would that have changed my life forever? Would I have finally realized who this person is, and in light of that, how foolish my fear is?
Like all of us, these men had placed their faith somewhere. Maybe in themselves and their seamanship. Maybe in their ability to predict the weather. Maybe in general circumstances. Maybe they knew they were good swimmers. I can’t know. I’m sure Jesus’ question was rhetorical. He knew that all of us put faith in something, but in a pinch, it may not be the right thing.
I suspect that Jesus knew these men were rugged, working class, tough, and pretty fearless. I suspect he knew they were self-reliant, independent, and resilient. They would have needed a pretty close brush with mortality, even though this was likely a very familiar occurrence to many of these men. But not at this magnitude. Not with wind at this ferocity.
Jesus knows how to bring each of us to zero. He knows how to bring you to the end of yourself. He knows that as long as you’re trusting in you, you cannot be simultaneously trusting in Him.
Not far from where this little boat eventually made safe landfall, Jesus said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs in the Kingdom of God. Only those who recognize their bankrupt spiritual state are fit for the Kingdom. He has a way of breaking all of us who say we want to follow Him. Even if it means we’re in the storm of our lives, and it looks like He’s sleeping through it and completely oblivious.
Do you find it curious that Christians get engrossed and upset about politics?
I do.
Consider:
Christians claim belief in a God who sent His only-begotten Son into the world during the time of a brutal Roman occupation of what is now Israel.
From this fact, one might deduce that politics and governmental systems aren’t a requirement for God to His thing.
It appears that if God wants to do something in the world, He can do it under the most oppressive, tyrannical regime imaginable. Can’t He? He might even use that brutal regime, unbeknownst to it, to accomplish His very purposes.
And since there are no red words in the bible that say anything about running for office, or supporting a candidate, or overturning the political system, even the casual reader of the bible might conclude politics is irrelevant when it comes to Jesus’ real mission.
There’s a passage in the New Testament that does touch on something Jesus cares about: saving the lost.
At one point He tells his followers to lift up their eyes and look at the fields. They are white and ready to be harvested, He says, telling them, ”Pray to the Lord of the Harvest that He will send forth laborers into the harvest.”
They must have listened. In the very next passage they are ordained as Apostles and sent out two by two to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons. They are to give as freely as they’ve received, being wise as serpents but harmless as doves. He tells them, ”Whoever receives you, receives Me.”
These passages would be sermon material for months. But here’s a thought; these first, real Evangelicals were sent out, not to register voters, not to carry political flags, not to pray to golden idols of failed politicians, but to reach the lost.
In light of Jesus’ stated mission to ”seek and save the lost”, this occurred to me:
Many of the country’s affected by the pre-Covid travel ban imposed by our former President (the guy anointed by today’s misguided, seemingly-biblically-illiterate, Evangelicals and Charismatics as “God’s choice”), do not allow Jesus to be preached as Savior in those lands. It is illegal. It is punishable by imprisonment; sometimes by torture and death.
Yet, with that ban lifted, the people living in lands where the preaching of the gospel is forbidden will once again be able to come to the United States, where they will have the chance to hear it (or at least some Americanized version of it) on every street corner and on television, radio, and the internet.
If you are God, and you are actually concerned that the lost hear the Truth, would you not want them to come to a place where they can hear it?
Or would you be too concerned about the political optics of allowing people from Muslim nations in?
Bottom line: Jesus isn’t political and He won’t allow Himself to be co-opted for political purposes.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say, wherever the Holy-Spirit-filled people in this country and around the world are, and whoever they may be; you’re not likely to find them on television, or on Twitter. I’m willing to bet they aren’t thinking much about politics, or entangled with political issues.
I feel confident they’re enjoying communion with God, abiding in His Presence, unmoved by whichever party holds political power. Pretty sure they routinely pray that the Lord of the Harvest will send out laborers into the harvest while there is yet time.
Note: I realize my viewpoint may offend some readers who identify as Christians. My intention is not to cause you offense, but to raise your awareness. Christians are given explicit instructions in how to act towards political leaders in 1 Timothy 2:1-4:
”I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;
For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior;
Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”
I don’t see anything here that indicates so-called Christians should lay hands on an idol of a disgraced former president, utter false prophecies about him either staying in, or reclaiming political power, or get involved in attempts to legislate the social hot-button issues of the day.
According to the verses above, Christians are to pray for ALL that are in authority. They are to lead quiet and peaceable lives in godliness and honesty. THIS is good and acceptable in the sight of God. He wants to use Christians as the instruments of bringing the knowledge of the truth to the lost that the lost might be saved. That won’t happen if we soil our garments in the murk and muck of politics, especially when we try to append Jesus’s name to our own political actions. He is not a member of either political party, nor the water-carrier for any politician, period.
Typical NYC alley. Similar to the one in this story.
I’ve heard God speak to me on a number of occasions. I’m not claiming to be unique in this. In fact, I don’t think anyone can have a genuine relationship with Him without hearing him speak directly.
Now, I’ve never heard Him with my ears, unless it was when He used someone else’s voice. Most times, I didn’t need ears. Ears aren’t the part of us that hear anyway, anymore than eyes are the parts that see.
One such occasion was in New York City in 1995. I was engaged in full-time street ministry in Charlotte. I went to spend a week learning from the best at Times Square Church, the ministry founded by the late David Wilkerson, author of The Cross and The Switchblade. They had a program encouraging visiting clergy to come and learn by participation.
In 1995, TSC was running several food trucks to serve hotdogs, street food, and the gospel to homeless locations throughout the five burrows. It also ran a permanent, physical location off of 5th avenue in what was then known as ”Crack Alley”. This ministry was well known on the NYC ”street-sheet” for homeless and impoverished people. It was housed in a three story building situated in a row house in what was a very, seedy, high crime area at that time.
I was used to being alone in bad neighborhoods in Charlotte, but I was not used to being in an architectural canyon that felt very much like a one-lane trap. I was told to arrive by 10 am, two hours before the mid-day lunch would be served. Getting there meant my first trip on a train from across the East River in New Jersey, then my first subway trip, and then a stroll down a garbage-strewn block that seemed a mile long. I looked over my shoulder so many times while trying to get to the correct number, it’s a wonder I didn’t have a crick in my neck.
Finally, I reached the address I’d been given. It was unceremoniously identified by a hand-lettered cardboard sign on the outer wall by the heavy steel door, ”Upper Room Ministries”. I rang the buzzer, waited for a long minute, and heard a voice in a Brooklyn-tinged accent over the scratchy intercom, ”Yeah, who are yous?” I gave my name, told them I was a visiting minister from North Carolina, and that I was there to minister for the noon service.
The door gave a heavy clank, unlocked from within and popped open an inch. I pulled it open and stepped inside onto a three square foot landing of chipped black and white tile that looked like a dirty, miniature checkerboard. Directly to my front was a steep stairway covered by gray, industrial, non-slip treads leading straight up from the street. As soon as I cleared the door, it swung shut and locked behind me. Serious security, I thought to myself.
I had been involved in several outreaches with other ministries in Charlotte that served soup and sandwiches, hotdogs and potato chips to the homeless. But an aroma wafted down to greet me as I traversed the narrow stairway lined with ancient dark-stained bead-board walls. I wasn’t smelling vegetable soup or chili. It smelled like I was climbing up to the dining room of a five-star restaurant!
I got to the top of the stairs to a small vestibule where the door had been propped open. I stepped in to a room with a long hallway to the right, a large room to the left, and a wall of windows on the opposite side from where I stood. Glancing down the hall to the right, I could see restroom signs beside some doors. The huge room to the left seemed to take up the whole floor. A couple of people were unfolding metal chairs from stacks along the left-hand wall, dragging them across the linoleum and forming them into rows. They gave me cursory nods without speaking and kept at their task. ”Yankees,” I thought to myself. There was no dais, only a simple wooden lectern at the far end of the main room. On the far wall, behind the lectern, was a large screen for an overhead projector. I could see one set up on a small table in the midst of the chairs.
The windowed wall across from the entry allowed for some daylight, but only provided a view of the dingy building across the narrow street. Folding tables lined the wall beneath the windows. On the tables were baskets and containers of plasticware, napkins, and straws. To the far right end was a small city scape of stacked plastic and styrofoam cups. I walked in that direction and saw there was a large opening at that end of the room. It was from here that the aroma was coming. That was the kitchen.
I walked into the kitchen where two grandmotherly ladies were bent over their tasks tending to the mouth-watering food that was in the two ovens. I saw no soup pots on the stoves. On the prep tables were baking pans filled with chicken breasts and pineapple rings. There were a couple dozen buttered french loaves sitting on sheets of tinfoil on another table, ready to be wrapped for their turn in the ovens.
Peering over the shoulder of the nearest lady, I said, ”Hawaiian Chicken?” in a tone of evident delight and surprise. I thought maybe it was being prepared for the ministry team and that was why I had been told to arrive two hours early. I was salivating from my walk up the steps and now seeing the delicious food, I was hoping they were preparing for the team to eat.
She finished fussing over the pans of caramelizing chicken in her oven, stood up to wipe her hands on her apron, and stated matter-of-factly, ”Only the best for souls.”
That was lesson number one. It was a lesson I saw demonstrated many times over in my week there as a visiting minister. Times Square Church, housed in the fabulous old Heller Theatre, former venue of ”Jesus Christ Superstar” at 51st and Broadway, was all about souls. Period. It existed as a way to bring church to the unchurched, to bring salvation to the lost, to bring Jesus to the world.
On this particular day, I had another important lesson to learn.
As more of the ministry team filed in, after first providing their bonafides into the street level intercom before being buzzed up, I began to wonder when I’d be told how long I would be given to speak to the crowd of homeless and hungry that would soon be arriving. Usually these messages are kept pretty short so the food doesn’t get too cold, but I’d never been at one that served anything but soup or peanut-butter and jelly, so I didn’t know what the format might be.
I figured I would be told when I’d speak when the time was right, so I pitched in to help with the chairs, and had helped arrange chinet plates on the long tables. The ladies even trusted me enough to cover the chicken with foil and place it into warmers further in back of the kitchen. But I had come to ”minister the Word” and I was getting a bit anxious to know when I’d get to preach. I mean, no one had really even asked my name to that point.
Finally, I got up enough nerve to ask the powerfully built, jean-jacket clad black man who seemed to be in charge if they served the meal before or after the message so I would be ready. He looked at me quizzically, the way I’ve looked at my wayward children, with a look of bemused curiosity. His large brows raised and seemed to pull up the corners of his mouth into a huge grin. ”Oh, pastor Proffit, we thought we’d let you serve today by offering juice or coffee to the people as they come in.”
”Juice or C-coffee?”, I stammered.
”Well, actually, we serve that to them ourselves, what I meant was you’ll offer them juice or coffee and then give them a plastic cup if they want juice or styrofoam if they want coffee.”
He peered at me to make sure I understood, and when I hesitated a moment, he said, ”You can put your bible over on the table next to you. It will be fine. Just stand there next to the stack of cups, ok? When the people enter they will be coming right past you to get to their seats.”
I nodded, tucked my tail, and went to my station. Plastic or styrofoam, I never.
A little before noon, the buzzer from the street started sounding. They sent someone down to stand sentry and to keep the assembling crowd from pushing the button over and over until it was time to come up. By this time there were a couple of musicians tuning guitars at the front, and ”Mr. T” in a jean-jacket was praying, pacing back and forth behind the lectern.
Finally, he called us all to attention and led us in a prayer that God would use us all for His Glory, that he would speak to the people present for the service, and that people would see and experience a living demonstration of Jesus. We all said ”Amen” and took our places.
I was surprised by the throng of people that burst through the vestibule doors when they were finally allowed upstairs. I kept up pretty well asking each visitor their drink preference as the filed by my station on their way to take a seat.
It was an orderly, organized process with several people acting as ushers gently, but firmly guiding the comers into the first rows, filling from front to back as they went. Other teams carried pitchers of juice and coffee, serving and pouring as the people found their seats.
I heard languages of every sort around me and the English I heard was often heavily accented by a foreign flavor, not just the Yankee-fied English of New Yorkers. It was delightful to see such a turnout.
As the chairs were filling, I noticed a black couple come in near the end of the line. A tall and unhealthily thin man wearing dirty jeans and worn out Nikes and a woman almost as vivid as he was gray. His eyes were downcast, the lids drooping. When they got closer I could see that his hair was patchy and I noticed his skin was scaling around his temples.
”Aids”, I thought to myself, having seen its ravages before.
He was leaning heavily on his female companion. I could imagine the toll the climb up the stairs must have taken, but he obviously needed the meal. The woman had a bright floral scarf with coral accents tied around her head. I could see rivulets of geri-curled black waves flowing from underneath it. Her dangling gold earrings would have put Dionne Warwick to shame. They nearly touched the shoulders of her lime green summer dress. The combination of colors and jewelry reminded me of the characters you might see on the label of a bottle of rum.
When they got near enough, I asked, ”Juice or coffee?” as I had for all the others previously.
The woman answered for both, her boyfriend or husband or lover too out of it to acknowledge my question.
”Cawfee”, came the answer in the deepest voice I had heard that afternoon.
I glanced up in alarm, and then noticed the prominent Adam’s apple framed by the lime green V-neck of the cheap polyester dress. My stomach lurched and involuntarily flipped on itself. Gathering my composure, I gingerly pulled two styrofoam cups off the top of the stack and handed them over to ”her”. In my imagination, I was trying to extend my arm as far as I could reach, holding the cups by the very tips of my fingers to avoid any possibility of contact and contamination. She gave a curt, clinking, nod of appreciation and moved on as I let out what felt like was an audible sigh of relief that they had passed.
It was then that I heard God.
”Do you think I love them any less than I love you?”
I stood in stunned silence as the musicians started singing an old hymn. Then the tears started.
”There is fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins.
And sinners plunged beneath that flood,
lose all their guilty stains.”
”Lose all their guilty stains,
Lose all their guilty stains,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.”
I had come to minister, to preach the Gospel, to bring Jesus to the lost, and hope to the desperate, but I had been deemed qualified for the job of handing out cups.
And it was there, beside the plastic and styrofoam that God, My Savior, reminded me that His Grace is Sufficient, and taught me afresh of His own confidence in His both His ability and willingness to Love a sinner out of sin by Grace and not by judging them out of it, by law. The way He was continuing to do for me.
“Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done; on earth as it is in heaven…“
I wonder how many stop to think how the will of God is done in heaven.
Some pray these words as if they are inviting God to impose His Will on the citizens of earth…even upon those who don’t want it.
But the ”as it is in heaven” part. Does anyone imagine that there is a single inhabitant of heaven who does not want the Will of God to be done? That there are perhaps some residents whose obedience must be coerced by law, and who must be cowed by fear?
I think not. In another place we are taught, ”Perfect love casts out fear for fear involves punishment…he that fears has not been perfected in love.”
As a much younger man, I was willful and self-governed. I was free and un-fettered. I used my freedom to explore the boundaries of life, both external and internal. I discovered that life has an edge that one can fall off. I followed my will and used my freedom to strut right up to that edge on more than one occasion. Being persuasive by gift and curse, I convinced others to march to the edge with me. And I knew some who fell in, either outwardly or inwardly.
But in a place where I was not looking for governance, I was found by the Governor. I was found in a time when I was so sick of my own lies, that I was quite literally begging for Truth, so blinded by my errors that I stretched out my hands to be led. Like a lost and frightened sheep, I was found by a Shepherd who could see further down the road than I could see. One who knew where to find green pastures I could lie down in, and gentle streams I could drink from. One so strong, that when my enemies appeared, He would declare, ”Let’s eat!” and set out a table before me, so confident in His own ability to protect, defend, and keep me.
I learned by experience that God is Love. And what does Love require, but a lover? …I became determined that He need not look past me to find one.
After many years, I still want to be governed. I need to be governed. I crave and value and relish and happily submit to the governance of my Redeemer. When I stray, He doesn’t have to threaten me. He doesn’t have to whip me. He doesn’t have to ridicule me, or exclude me. He loves me back to Him. And when the sunshine of His Love bursts forth, I am still determined that it will not hit me in the back.
Ive found that God Loves me better than I can. I’ve found that I can trust Him more than I can trust myself. I found that His Kingdom must start in me and when I enter heaven (whatever that may be), I won’t need any convincing to kneel, or to bow, or to worship. I won’t need a New User’s Manual.
God’s will is done in Heaven by inhabitants who are delighted by that will; by those who want nothing more, and who would be satisfied by nothing less. His will on earth (if done as it is in heaven) is done by the persons with the same heart. Not by imposition, but by supplication. Not by people having it legislated upon them, but by people who cannot get enough of it.
That is what the phrase in the Lord’s Prayer means. It is a crying out for the God who is Love to suborn obedience to His Will by that Love. For God to love the disobedient into submission. For God to win hearts and minds into the voluntary servitude of delight in His pleasure.
God already governs the Universe, but the Peace of that government, the wholeness of it, is only enjoyed wholly by those who want to be governed, and happily yield. God governs, not because it is good for Him, but because it is good for us.
How are they who do not know these things to find out? By law, by threats, by the sword? There are other religions who employ such methods. My God would rather be stabbed than stab. When He finds one who will not yield, He is the one with tears in His eyes.
No-one will be dragged into heaven kicking and screaming. And every single unfortunate soul who falls into hell will fall there against every power God can wisely wield to prevent it.
The only place that the Kingdom of God can be found on earth and where His will is done, ”as it is in Heaven” is in those of us, like our counterparts in Heaven, who crave it so badly for ourselves we can’t get enough.
