Small Steps Towards God
We speak of many things in life as if they where pure black and white, positive or negative, on or off. That’s probably true for many things but, not all is as it appears. Like we say “the light is either on or it is off”, “the water faucet is either on or it is off”, “the car is running or it is not”. Those statements seem true enough for all practical purposes, but there must be, even in these examples, some time, even if so briefly, when the light filament is hot, but not yet glowing hot; or when the water valve has been opened a bit but the water is not gushing out; or when the car’s engine is rotating but still needs force from the starter motor to fully start the cyclical combustion process (have you ever held the key for a fraction of a second short of what was needed for the motor to catch completely?).
When we think of spiritual life, many times Christians think of people as completely “lost” or completely “saved”. We may say a person “is worldly” or she “is godly”, or she “is backslidden” This is all fine, it is practical talk, a fair amount of generalization has been assumed in the comment. We clearly don’t mean to say she is fully this or the other. After all, it would be cumbersome and boring if every comment we made was highly accurate and technical. But the way we speak does seem to influence, to some degree, how we think. When was the last time you looked at some “clearly ungodly person” and thought, “That guy there looks like a…(insert what you want, thug, dealer, immoral person, cheat, etc), but is it possible that he is on the edge of giving himself over to God?”
You see we all are either walking in the direction of intimacy with God or away from intimacy with God. Our relationship is not possibly static. Don’t worry I’m not talking about salvation or justification here. I’m talking about the state of our relationship either before or after salvation. Have you ever thought that there is some process going on in a person’s life prior to them accepting Christ….which of course means prior to them giving control of their life over to Christ. If it is a relationship, there must be some start, some revealing, some gradual understanding of WHO God is. Something that wins us over to Him. (Clearly something like a Paul encounter, something apparently immediate, is not out of the question for God, either.)
I mention it because I’m not sure that I had ever really stopped to think about it before I started serving as a missionary. It seemed to me, from my Christian culture exposure that “evangelism” was about making a convincing logical argument and getting a decision. It always seemed to me to assume starting and finishing the thing all at the same time. It never even occurred to me that there might be some process involved. (And for that matter, I never really thought too much about there being a growth process after accepting Christ.)
Last week I went to help a local guy, Dorivaldo, lay out his property to start digging footers for a house he is going to build.( I’m building a brick house with my two teenage boys, more out of courage than know-how, and Dorivaldo now insists that I’m a builder. I figure if he’s got courage to trust me to help him, then sure why not.). Dorivaldo, and his family have been faithfully attending the small church in our garage since December. He hasn’t made any commitment to Christ, at least not a public one, and they’ve got their own family problems. Dorivaldo you might say is a bit “rough-around the edges”, but a generally decent guy.
So as I was pulling out the tape measure and brick layer’s line he said “Hey, maybe we could pray before we start.” What he wanted was to pray for our work time and the project before we even started. So you have to ask what is going on here!? Why does a guy with a non-religious background in a non-religious setting, with no immediate life-threatening circumstance say, “Hey let’s pray”?… It’s because he is starting to journey in the direction of God! As I prayed for the project and our work day, outwardly, I remained calm like nothing was happening, but inside I said “That’s it! That’s the first fruit! This is cool!”
This is what I’m looking for, signs of a person starting to walk in the direction of God. Decisions for Christ are awesome, but they don’t generally just happen, there are lots of small and apparently insignificant steps along the way. If we consider that people are on a journey in one direction or another, not fully in one place nor fully in the other, not fully “godly” nor fully “worldly”, we may be more likely to believe that we individually can somehow help influence in what direction they will travel, or possibly facilitate their attempts to journey in the direction of increased intimacy with God.
In pursuit of small steps towards God,
Keith