“The choice before us is plain: Christ or chaos, conviction or compromise,
discipline or disintegration. I am rather tired of hearing about our rights…
The time is come to hear about our responsibilities…America’s future depends
upon her accepting and demonstrating God’s government.”
Rev. Peter Marshall, Senate Chaplain, 1947
As I listened to my own internal chaos and the messages of those around me, it’s no wonder that our mental, social, emotional, physical, and spiritual economy has disintegrated. When we leave Jesus and His truth out and when we replace them with the messages of our culture and people-groups, we have a mess. Conformity to this world leads to lies, distortions, perversions, destruction, and death. If we are messengers of the mess, we create and reinforce chaos. Conformity to Christ leads to life, truth, and peace. We’ve been called to be Christ’s messengers of truth and to share His life and light to those around us. When we know and live the truth, Jesus sets us free.
When we surrender to Christ and offer our brain and body to Christ as living sacrifices, we can’t crawl off of the altar. We must stop conforming to the patterns of this world. We must choose Christ and Christ alone. When we fix our minds and our hearts on Jesus and on His truth, God transforms us by changing the way we think (Romans 12:1,2). He changes what we see and how we see everything and everyone. He changes our beliefs and our values. He changes what we care about and what we don’t care about. When Jesus defines our reality, we no longer see anything from this world’s perspective. Jesus makes everything new, especially our lifestyles.
When we walk closely with God and with one another and when we refuse to be messengers of our culture, we have daily opportunities to communicate messages of hope and truth and encouragement to those around us. When we’re walking together closely, we don’t have to raise our voices or yell to get attention. If we just watch the body language of one another, we can tell when someone is okay or not okay. Many times, words aren’t necessary, just being emotionally and spiritually present to sit with or walk with or listen to is all that is needed. When we’re walking closely with God, we can feel His nudge or hear His whisper or sense His Spirit urging us to say or to do something. The Holy Spirit also defines our boundaries, informing us from within what we’re not to think, to say, or to do.
Following Jesus will make us radically different. We won’t have a fear of missing out on things of this world. We won’t spend our time repeating and doing what everyone else is saying and doing. Instead of being too busy for God and for one another, we’ll remove the busyness and distractions that consume us and suck the life out of us. We’ll get closer to Jesus and to people and discover God at work in the midst of the messes, restoring order. We’ll also discover when we create our own messes and say “yes” way-too-often and when we take on the messes of those around us. As we quiet ourselves before God and listen to those who are honest with us, we can discover when and how we’re drawn to distraction, busyness, and chaos. God is like my favorite crunchy peanut butter. Thicker is better! God doesn’t want us to be spread out or spread thin. He wants us closer to experience and share the fullness of His love, power, and truth. God isn’t a God of chaos nor does He want our lives to be chaotic. He doesn’t want us spreading messes. He wants to define and refine what and how we communicate with our God-given voices. Let’s just stick to speaking truth in love.
When you have daily God-given moments to be a messenger for Jesus in your home and in your community, choose and use your words wisely. Speak only words of life. If you’re at a loss for words, speak Jesus. When you speak the Name of Jesus…everything changes.