Crossing a line.
There’s something about crossing a line suggesting that you were one thing and now you’re something different. There’s clarity in seeing things that way. It’s defined and clear. It’s why some prefer seeing thing in black and white rather than dealing with the grey areas of life.
It’s one thing to see things as crossing a line, it’s something else to consider it more walking along a line rather than crossing one. Not walking a line between two positions, but walking a line that’s taking you somewhere.
There were elements of starting life as a Christian that was about crossing a line. Baptism meant I had crossed a line. Crossing that line according to some was not becoming perfect, but it did say that I was ‘saved’. As I wasn’t perfect, there was the ongoing refrain that I was just a sinner saved by grace. I had crossed a line and was saved and that was that.
There was an issue that emerged about that thinking about just being a sinner saved. That issue was that the statement did not tell the whole story. A sinner saved acknowledges that they sin and need to be saved. a sinner saved also suggests that because they are saved, that’s it. As it transpired, the crossing of the line was to signify the start of walking along a line. Not walking on my own initiative or on my own agenda, but following the steps of the Saviour.
As I acknowledges that I was unable to do the walking on my own because of that sinner tag, then I needed to help on the inside. That was the joy of the promise of the Holy Spirit. Poured out is one experience and an amazing one too. But the encouragement to be filled with the Spirit to enable the following made a transforming difference. Day by day gradually learning that it’s not about satisfaction in a state, but thanksgiving for being on the journey – filled to follow, a follower filled with the life of Christ to walk where He wants me to walk and then talk what He wants me to talk.
There is never an occasion when those realities are not necessary – the reality that not only am I a sinner saved by grace, but I am a follower filled with the Spirit to walk along the line set out. That’s not a solo job either, because others are deliberately set on the way to likewise express to the world seen and unseen the wonders of God. The wonders of God who has not saved for the sake of it, but have saved to set apart a people for His purposes.
This does not erase the experiences of those grey areas of life, it just says that following the Saviour filled by His Spirit allows us to navigate those issues with the mind clear.
(Photo by Karen Gillman on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 