Consumable Jesus?
“Jesus Christ is like a super-delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Your favorite kind of peanut butter, your favorite kind of jelly, and your favorite kind of bread. We are like the clear plastic sandwich bag that holds Jesus inside. In other words, we are the chosen vessels of Christ to this hungry, starving world, and our job is to let the wonderful Jesus inside us show through our baggy selves. We must remember humility, remembering that when you hand someone a PB&J sandwich, what they really need most is the sandwich, not the bag. Really, it is the PB&J that is so very exciting. Who even really thinks about the bag unless the bag is defective somehow? So go share Jesus with people! He’s super-exciting and they need Him. And let the emphasis be on the PB&J (Jesus) inside, not the bag (yourself). We just need to hold Jesus and be see-through.”
The person above wrote us a much longer email sharing the talent that she has for art and offering us her abilities. All I could picture was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the cross. I have to admit I let the opportunity pass us by. CDG’s curriculum may not use enough kinesthetic activities or give their teachers enough “helps” sometimes, but I’m so thankful that our curriculum prioritizes telling kids the beautiful truth about who God is to kids. And hopefully, at my job, I can constructively help with the less important details of kinesthetic activities, teacher prep and training, etc.
“Your words were found, and I ate them.”
Brian says I need an outlet — that I need to start posting again. Posting is my way of getting out things that I want to say to large numbers of people and don’t have a platform (yet) to say. So here we go. This might be my topic for awhile.
Jeremiah 15:16 “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts.” I love this verse in Jeremiah! The people of Jeremiah’s time had forgotten the words of God — forgotten them in the sense that they found them to be irrelevant. Each was following his own way. Revival was needed. And Jeremiah received God’s call. Obeying God, for Jeremiah, was not optional: God tells Jeremiah that He will be with him, and that the people will not listen, but “Do not be dismayed by them, lest I dismay you before them.” God promises deliverance to Jeremiah. The tough part about realizing that he is God’s prophet through whom God’s word will be spoken is that he is now confronted with his own sin. Yikes. “Heal me O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me and I shall be saved, for you are my praise.” Jer. 17:14.
I feel like Jeremiah most of the time since we’ve been writing curriculum–finding delight as I meditate on the truths we write about, and realizing how little I know God’s Word, how superficial most of my treatment of it has been over the course of my life. Often I realize my own sin as I see the disparity between God’s good word and my own life. I see how little I actually trust God and His Word–how much I have settled and continue to settle for someone else’s interpretation, someone else’s application, someone else’s FAITH in God — and have been satisfied, with either superficial or secondhand treatments of God’s Word, asking barely a question, pondering for barely a moment over my morning readings, barely having the integrity to dig in for myself because some professor or pastor somewhere taught me has already taught me what to think so I’ll just let him, the specialist, do the work and just be satisfied with that. Lies. Deception.
Now that I’m writing curriculum and hear (some) people complaining about how hard it is to actually think about the Word of God for themselves, I resonate with Jeremiah 20: ”O Lord, you have deceived me, and I was deceived; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed…for the Word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long. If I say, I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name, there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” The parallels break down because many people do not reproach us but rather thank us for writing Bible studies that don’t insult young people’s intelligence. But I am quick to hear the negative (probably because it comes from the people that I most prefer approval from sometimes). So I feel like Jeremiah. I don’t think some of those who oppose what we’re doing realize how much they rely on others to mediate the Word to them. Particularly at a church that is known for its biblical faithfulness, I feel I am constantly surprised when I see how quickly others are satisfied with another’s ownership of the Word.
And then, like Jeremiah, I see how many times I have done it myself.
Everyone in any ministry should read this quote.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who does actually try to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they have lived in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt, 1899, Chicago
