a drop of water

But–I reemphasize, because it is so important–the primary “learning” here is not about how to act, just as the primary wrongness or problem in human life is not what we do.  Often what human beings do is so horrible that we can be excused, perhaps, for thinking that all that matters is stopping it.  But this is an evasion of the real horror: the heart from which the terrible actions come.  In both cases, it is who we are in our thoughts, feelings, dispositions, and choices–in the inner life–that counts.  Profound transformation therefore is the only thing that can definitively conquer outward evil.

It is very hard to keep this straight.  Failure to do so is a primary cause of failure to grow spiritually.  Love, we hear, is patient and kind (1 Corinthians 13:4).  Then we mistakenly try to be loving by acting patiently and kindly–and quickly fail.  We should always do the best we can in action, of course; but little progress is to be made in that arena until we advance in love itself — the genuine inner readiness and longing to secure the good of others.  Until we make significant progress there, our patience and kindness wil be shallow and short-lived at best.

It is love itself–not loving behavior, or even the wish or intent to love–that has the power to “always protect, always trust, always hope, put up with anything and never quit” (1 Corinthians 13:7-8, PAR).  Merely trying to act lovingly will lead to despair and to the defeat of love.  It will make us angry and hopeless.

But taking love itself,–God’s kind of love–into the depths of our being through spiritual formation will, by contrast, enable us to act lovingly to an extent that will be surprising even to ourselves, at first.  And this love will then become a constant source of joy and refreshment to ourselve and others.  Indeed it will be, according to the promise, “a well of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:14)–not an additional burden to carry through life, as “acting lovingly” surely would be.

p.24, Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard

Joe’s recent post over at globalyawning, challenges us to use our testimonies to engage the world around us.  Our testimonies are a manifestation of that “vision of life in the kingdom of the heavens in the fellowship of Jesus” that Dallas Willard suggests is essential as we lead people to become disciples of Jesus.

Our testimonies are living.  The initial point of acknowledging Jesus as Lord of our life is just that, the beginning of our testimony, our daily learning from, walking with, and trusting of God.  The association that testimonies are limited to our initial conversion restricts us from the depth of gratefulness for that initial point that is gained in the perspective of a life giving and active relationship with God.  The more our lives our transformed into being more like Christ, the more we understand where we came from in sin without Christ.

There is often a temptation to fluff up our testimonies about God with our own ideas of what we think will least offensive or more inline with current trends and thoughts.  But there is no need for fluff.  A living testimony requires no fluff of ours because it describes the truth and reality of God’s work in us for the undeserved, grace filled expression of love that it is. This work is supernatural.  Our fluff does not do it justice.

The work in us is great primarily because of the worker, God.  The greatness of the work itself is only secondary.  Because of the magnitude and creativity of God’s power and work, each persons testimony will give a glimpse of the reality that is an omniscient, omnipresent, incomprehensible God. It is in the little bits and pieces, the glimpses of the larger reality that we experience God individually and then pass it on to inspire those whose hearts are ready in the form of our testimony.

I believe that God’s work in us, his over all design is inherently communal.  I mean to say that when we are ready to allow God’s work in us, our testimonies, our relationship with God to engage the relationships that we have with our friends and family, we will find that God’s work in us mirrors and sometimes precedes his work in the very same friends and family.  This is how we can act as the hands and feet of God.