Helping People Think Like Jesus
It sounds rather innocuous really. It doesn’t shout at you. It’s not “Turning the Universe into a Church” or “Changing the World for Jesus” or “Preaching the Gospel to Every Living Creature on Earth” or “Conquering Creation for Christ.” It’s modest. And it’s short. I’ve read mission statements that are two or three paragraphs. That’s not a statement; it’s a creed. Nothing wrong with a creed mind you. But a mission statement needs to be quick and easy to remember, yet accurate. Every word must count. So if you “double-click” on a good mission statement it should expand for you into a carefully crafted description of what you do. Like this:
Helping: That’s right. Helping. We don’t force people to think like Jesus, or coerce them, or browbeat them. We don’t yell at them or argue with them. We help them. The reason is that only the Lord can actually bring a person to faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit does this. We just help, by praying, pointing, proclaiming, teaching, counseling and finding ways to express the Lord’s life and love. The people the Lord calls are already on His list, already in His mind. What we do is come along side and make ourselves useful to the Spirit. This way of working is not activistic, but it is active. We do a lot of things, some more visible than others. If we know a person is not yet a Christian, we help by praying for them, teaching the Word to them, consoling them in grief, offering them food if they need it, anything we can do to show that the Lord is real and alive in us. We seek to authentically live our whole lives, work and play, as real Christians. Our local community is our primary mission field.
If we know a person is a Christian, we help by praying for them, offering venues for spiritual worship and service, giving counsel, teaching, encouraging in the faith, anything we can do to strengthen and deepen their love and loyalty to the Lord. In this we are confident that the Spirit is at work and, though at times life looks bleak, we trust that His purposes will ultimately triumph. We are the Lord’s helpers, not His directors or managers. We work for Him, not the other way around. He was speaking in every person’s soul before we came on the scene and He will be present long after we’re gone. We help. That’s all. It’s a lot of work sometimes. Even when we initiate the projects, as we often do, we know it is because He put it on our hearts to do it. We’re responding to His Great Heart for those who know Christ and those who will.
People: This is about people God is calling to Himself. It’s not primarily about the political, sociological and environmental catastrophes that rise over society like a poised tsunami. We have important contributions to make to these issues, but they are secondary to the souls of people who must come into dynamic and personal relationship with the living God in Christ. Jesus Christ died for people. We are fallen image bearers that He is restoring to our original pristine condition before the Father, the King, retakes His creation. God loves humans, all kinds of them. So we help people.
Think: Faith is not the absence of thought; it is the presence of a certain sort of thought. It is thought that starts and ends with God in Christ. When we put our faith in Jesus Christ, God changes reality for us. Or perhaps a better way to say it is that we see Reality for the first time by experiencing His life. By His grace, the Lord thoroughly and completely rescues us from the old, dead ways and from our previous dark destiny. He forgives us and transforms us into the good people we used to pretend to be on our own. To think like Jesus is to understand God’s grace as the gift of eternal life and a transforming dynamic in this age and the age to come.
Our world ridicules and marginalizes faith in God as a sort of ignorant superstitious wish fulfillment that people eventually should outgrow. Thick, vacuous books have been written on this premise. But of course this isn’t so. Faith in God through Christ and by His Spirit is a type of knowledge that some people experience and others do not. But the fact that some do not know it yet does not mean it is untrue. The most important organ of faith is the mind. Fearing the Lord is where knowledge begins. We who know the Lord deliberately allow His Word to penetrate our minds, warming our hearts, altering our wills and changing our characters. Christians think deeply and thoroughly and quite differently. They start with God rather than with themselves. The reality is God. Everything else is second, including our thoughts about thinking.
Like Jesus. Jesus Christ is the True and Ultimate Human. He is completely God and completely man, two entire natures in one physical person. He lived the perfect life we should have lived and died the death we should have died. He offers His grace, life and skill to anyone who wants to learn from Him. His way is remarkably easy and light. He said so. He says that if we learn it, our souls will be unburdened by this age and free to serve God fully. But His new way is counterintuitive to our old way. The process is long and we experience setbacks from time to time. Yet He patiently persists in drawing us forward. He teaches us to rely on the Father through His Spirit, as He did on earth. He explains about what Good Life is. He shows us how to live in a fallen world with humility, hope, courage, wisdom and joy. He instructs us in the ways of eternal life here and now and makes us a part of His invisible kingdom before it takes visible form. There is so much to learn from Jesus that it takes as long as we have here. And none of us gets it all. But we will someday, forever.
So this is what we do. We help people think like Jesus. If they don’t know Him yet, we seek to introduce them to Him. If they do know Him, we encourage that knowing by various ministries and services. It’s all about Him and His work among His people as He builds His kingdom. In this way we intend to bless our community and culture as we honor the Risen Lord Jesus.