A Jesus Story

The YES training at HDC has begun! And with it comes the structure I have been craving!
For the trainings here, all the staff and participants share their spiritual pilgrimage, or, as I prefer, their Jesus story, within the first two weeks or so. I was one of the first staff members to share their Jesus story, so I spent an evening last week thinking about what to share.

It was really encouraging for me to reflect on how I've been changed through the years. Looking back, I was able to see God's hand in growing me closer to Him. I don't have my notes in front of me, but I will recount what I shared to the best of my ability.

Growing up, I had great Christian influences around me. I grew up in a Christian home, went to a private Christian school, and attended church every Sunday. However, I was spiritually dead. I said my prayers each night only because that's what my family did after family devotions. I was baptized in 7th grade, but only because my parents thought it would be a good thing to do. Again, there was nothing alive spiritually inside. And so this put me in the scary position of knowing the right things to say at Sunday school, but I didn't really have a relationship with Jesus.

Now, concerning un-spiritual aspects of growing up.

At school, I was the class clown. My church didn't have much of a youth group. Because of these, I didn't really have any close friends at all, and I didn't relate well with others. I formed my first close friendships during my first job at a Christian summer camp. Since I wasn't good at relating with others, I became too attached to one of my female friends there. I ended up hurting myself because of that. And I remember at the end of my second summer working there telling God to take care of the situation. Interestingly, the real situation was that there was no spiritual life inside me. And so God began to answer that prayer, but not in the way I expected.

That fall, my church hired a youth leader, Mike. When he started working, my youth group jump-started to life. Mike was (and continues to be) a man on fire for God, and it showed at youth group. God started speaking to me through my youth group's small groups; we would split up into a girls group and a guys group for Wednesday nights. We read through the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan as a group, and God used that to open my eyes to alot of things. I realized that I didn't really have much of a relationship with God and that most of my Christianity was just head knowledge. God worked in my heart, and I decided that I wanted to have a time of focused spiritual growth. So I took a year off college after I graduated high school to go on a YES trip (Youth Evangelism Service).

The three-month training was intense, but spiritually amazing. I loved the atmosphere of spiritual growth there. God spoke to me during my training (through others praying over me) and revealed that He wanted me to be a spiritual father. This was something that kept popping up during training, and I received much affirmation about this. I still don't know what this will look like exactly, but I know it's something in which God wants to use me. During my outreach (in Albania), I started having what I call "Jesus time": spending time alone with the Bible, listening to worship music or a podcast from a church. Much spiritual growth happened during my daily "Jesus time." One of the coolest things about my trip was that I was able to about things I was learning spiritually with my host mother, who was a Christian but knew no English. We were able to connect spiritually despite our different backgrounds.
I returned in July, and I had felt like I should work on staff here at HDC.

So that's my Jesus story so far, or the main gist of it. I was spiritually dead, but Jesus made me alive. Now, I am blessed to witness the first chapters of some of my friends' Jesus stories, and I'm blessed to be here at HDC, witnessing important chapters of the participants' Jesus stories. They are exciting stories of redemption and new life, and they are the best ones to tell others.

Pharisees in our Mirrors

The stuff I've been reading in the Bible has compelled me to write about this topic. I think it's something that we as Christians (for those reading who are Christians) have blinded ourselves to, and it's something we need to read about again in the Bible. What I'm going to talk about is directly from the Bible; nothing else. I'm taking a couple books from the New Testament and comparing the things I read to the culture I'm in. So if anything seems questionable, please take a look at the Bible and see for yourselves.

As I read in the Bible about who Jesus spent time with and what the apostle Paul writes about, I am struck by how many self-proclaimed Christians are suffering from what I call "Pharisee Syndrome." There are so many "Christians" out there who come across as condemning instead of loving toward unbelievers. It's as if they have forgotten that "...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) It's as if they have forgotten that "all of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath." (Ephesians 2:3) It's as if they have forgotten that Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." (Mark 2:17) It's as if they have forgotten that "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

Now, I am not called to judge people's hearts; that's God's business. I am just saying that I see what people are saying about themselves and how they're living; and it's not matching up. And this isn't a new occurrence; it was going on during Jesus' ministry. They were called the Pharisees and teachers of the law. They were the "experts." They were the "religious" guys. They "had it figured out." They were the ones who constantly condemned "sinners" for not following the Law of Moses and the traditions they kept. And yet they are the ones that Jesus constantly called out as hypocrites. Jesus warned his disciples, "Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy." (Luke 12:1) These Pharisees were religious, but they weren't followers of God. They became legalistic, sticking to traditions and laws, and judged those who weren't able to keep up. Paul quotes a passage referring to people with this attitude: "God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you." (Romans 2:24; see Isaiah 52:5 and Ezekiel 36:22)

These people were around 2,000 years ago, and they are around today too. Everywhere you look there are churches and people who claim to be Christians but condemn and judge, and who blaspheme God's name by their attitudes. Just last night I was talking with a friend of mine, and she shared something that made me angry. A group of people at her college were doing exercises on diversity, to show how people are different, and one of these exercises was about homosexuals. Before they started, one guy spoke up and said, "Just so you all know, I don't support this because I'm a Christian." Even though he didn't intend to be condemning, his words were hurtful to many there.
Is that what Jesus would say? He hung out with people who knew that they weren't righteous. (Mark 2:15) He loved them all. Everyone has fallen short, and God doesn't show favoritism. (Romans 2:11) We have been saved by grace alone, not by anything we do. (Ephesians 2:8)

Who are we to judge people who aren't following God? Would we have started following God if others had judged and condemned us for being sinful? If we are called to make disciples of the nations (Matthew 28:19), how is this attitude helping us fulfill that calling? Are we without sin? Have we become perfect? Like Jesus said, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." (Matthew 7:3,5) For God's sake (literally), remember who you are and let Him do the judging!

Sadly, many of us suffer from Pharisee Syndrome. You don't need to be always condemning and judging people to have this either. In the same way that the Pharisees were legalistic, many of us have become focused on doing the right things, on earning our salvation. We have forgotten that we were saved by grace and that faith is a gift we can't earn, and we strive to be good enough to satisfy our conscience. In Revelation, God says to a church that became focused on the works,"You have forsaken your first love." (2:4)  We contract the Pharisee Syndrome when our motivation stops being love. We need to remember that we all are sinful by nature, that we can never earn God's favor, and that God's love and grace has saved us.

So there you have it: the Pharisee Syndrome. If you are a Christian, I encourage you to read the Bible and evaluate yourself (2 Peter 1:10, 2 Corinthians 13:5, Psalm 139:23-24). This is something I also need to do. Let's read the Bible and humbly accept the truth that there are Pharisees in the world, and that there may be one in your mirror.