A Church Boy’s Journey to Jesus

I was saved as a young child and baptized when I was around 5 years old.  I remember “swimming” to the pastor as my feet weren’t long enough to reach the bottom of the baptismal.  My parent’s faith was real.  As all children do, I searched my parent’s hearts and actions for evidence of a real faith… and I found it.  I saw authenticity in their lives and came to know God for myself as a result.  They taught and modeled relationship.

Yet somewhere along my life’s path I picked up empty religion.  I was a Sunday Christian, a play actor, and a rule keeper.  I tried to always “save face”, keep a good reputation but I couldn’t let go and trust God.  I felt condemned within my own heart due to past mistakes.  My religion was powerless.  I was doing my own thing.

I was a good boy in the eyes of the world.  I’ve never been a drug user, never had a drinking habit and I’ve never been to prison.  I’ve never been a chain smoker or “talked like a sailor”.  But I needed Jesus!  In most people’s eyes, however, I was a good boy and pretty good person.  Yet, as I said, I grew up in a Christian home where my parents believed the Bible, were involved in church and attended at every opportunity.  Yet, I tried to do all the right things but mostly for the wrong reasons.  I was very concerned about what people thought of me and so I lived to please them.  To most people I appeared to be a good upstanding Christian man… and I was living that life for the most part.  Yet, I was EMPTY inside.  I was experiencing zero victory in my life and yet playing the role of “victorious Christian”.  There was little fruit, no joy, no real direction and a lot of wasted time.  Wow, did this church boy ever need Jesus.

I’ve made some real mistakes in life, in relationships, in ministry, with money and in wasted time but mostly with my relationship with God.  I became a religious man.  I was a Pharisee who learned to play that game called church and I played it well.  I was a pro.  A play actor playing a role and I was very comfortable, yet empty.  I’m not trying to be excessively hard on myself to make a point but truly I was lost, frustrated in my faith and my obvious failure to produce fruit in my life.  The funny thing is I used to comment about others ‘playing church’ but I was a pretty good player myself.  I tried to do all the right things but for all the wrong reasons.  I believed that God loved me and everyone else too but in the end my religion was empty.

“Blessed is the man that trusts in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.  For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreads out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat comes, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.”  Jeremiah 17:8-9

I heard someone say recently that the difference between true Christianity and religious Christianity is like the difference between a Christmas tree and a fruit tree.  A Christmas tree looks amazing.  It’s decorated on the outside with twinkling lights and tinsel and all our favorite ornamentation.

I remember many Christmas seasons’ where I would sit in the living room in the dark and just drink in the beauty of a beautiful tree with all the presents neatly stacked beneath.  We would hang candy, handmade ornaments and almost anything else we could find that would be enough to bring a sense of awe to any Ebenezer Scrooge.  However, the fact remained that this beautiful tree was dead.  We can prop it up in the corner of the room and decorate it and play Christmas music to set the mood but we’re still going to toss it out on the curb in two weeks before it really starts to deteriorate.

The Christmas tree is painted green and then propped up in the corner of a room to look like a thriving tree with an abundance of fruit.  In reality it’s still dead inside.  Christmas tress can’t produce fruit they’re just decorated on the outside to look pretty.  Their purpose is to look good, not to produce fruit.  However, an apple tree is alive!  Apple trees bear fruit by their very nature as an apple tree.  They don’t struggle to produce fruit… they don’t need to fast and pray to produce one apple.  No, they produce fruit simply because their nature is that of an apple tree.  A fruit tree may not have all that glitz and glamour that a Christmas tree has but it does have something that a Christmas tree will never be able to produce – that’s true life and fruit.  Real fruit – as this thing is alive!

You see, religious Christianity is represented by that Christmas tree in our analogy.  As much as I love my Christmas tree during the Christmas season I don’t want to be that “Christmas tree” Christian who is dead on the inside yet portraying the happy face on the outside.  My heart is to be that fruit tree that abundantly fruitful.

I had to get to the point where I had to admit that I could not do this.  I cannot live this Christian life.  I cannot bear fruit!  I cannot overcome this addiction!   I cannot overcome this pattern of thinking!  I’m lost without you Jesus!  Then help arrived.  It was as if Jesus was saying to me “Finally… yes, finally you’ve given up on your own efforts and can now seek out my grace”.

What is grace?  Grace is what God has already provided through Jesus Christ.  This was God’s side of things.  I’ve been trying to get things from Him when all the while I had them already and just didn’t know where to look.  God was simply asking me to do my part – believe Him.

So, a new journey begins.  A life of trusting Jesus and living in His grace.

Sometimes, we just don’t know anything else other than our part in the play.  Often people believe that these religious exercises are exactly that God demands from us.  Yet, the Christmas tree life leads to a life of frustration, emptiness and powerlessness.

Contrary to popular belief, God isn’t so much interested in your behavior as He is in giving you a new nature. This isn’t just about behavior modification but true transformation.  If you receive God’s nature and renew your mind then you’ll truly change but not before. 

God wants to do a nature transplant in each of us.  If you’re born-again, you have already received the very nature of God (Eph 4:22-24; I Peter 1:4; 1 John 3:9).  Ephesians tells us to “put on that new man”.  This means we have a part to play in how much of the life of God we experience here and now.  So, be sure to put your new man “on”.

“…put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”  Eph. 4:24

Christianity was never meant to be a religion but a relationship with a living God that has taken up residence within.  Through the work of Jesus, we have been empowered by grace to live life as overcomers rather than the overcome.  We don’t need to act out a role but rather we need to ‘put on’ our new man in Christ and be renewed in the Spirit of our minds.  Planting ourselves in Christ.

This church boy was powerless to change yet I am now being renewed in the spirit… and fruit is the result.  Do you have a living faith?  Are you tired of the religious games?  Email me and let me know what you think.