Simply Jesus and Faith 

I was given a unique opportunity to share my life’s testimony last night to the nurse attending to Randy. She shared her life with us as well. What is still in my mind is what I generally say to people who ask why I left professional ministry. The trappings of politics, pressures to go farther and higher, to be religious versus relational, with little time to process the actions just taken and the ultimate stress of being reminded to make a profit in ministry became too overwhelming and unnatural to me, I prayed (more like crying out to God) for a more simple life. I prayed for simply Jesus. He responded.

EVALUATION … good for the soul!
No it’s time to revisit simplicity of faith. It’s time for a new direction, a fresh look and learning with more ways to grow our faith. God seems to be directing me back to Hebrews. We are going to use Eugene Peterson’s explanation of this book of faith by using The Message as our reference. I’m looking forward to what God will teach us. Maybe it will help you, too. I’m praying for all of us each morning. Know that.

We open with Peterson’s introduction of how we must get out of the way, by faith, so that we can get on the Way…Jesus, the Way, Truth and the Life for all. I relate so well to this introduction because I was once “blind, but now I see”. 

“It seems odd to have to say so, but too much religion is a bad thing. We can’t get too much of God, can’t get too much faith and obedience, can’t get too much love and worship. But religion–the well-intentioned efforts we make to ‘get it all together’ for God–can very well get in the way of what God is doing for us.”

“The main and central action is everywhere and always what God has done, is doing and will do for us. Jesus is the revelation of that action. Our main and central task is to live in responsive obedience to God’s action revealed in Jesus. Our part in the action is the act of faith.”

“But more often than not we become impatiently self-important along the way and decide to improve matters with our two cents worth. We add on, we supplement, we embellish. But instead of improving on the purity and simplicity of Jesus, we dilute the purity, clutter the simplicity. We become fussily religious, or anxiously religious. WE GET IN THE WAY.”

“That’s when it’s time to read and pray our way through the letter to the Hebrews again, written for ‘too religious’ Christians, for “Jesus-and’ Christians. This letter deletes the hyphens, the add-ons. The focus becomes clear and sharp again: GOD’S ACTION IN JESUS. And we are free once more for the act of faith, the one human action in which we don’t get IN the way but ON THE WAY.”
(Eugene Peterson)

Dear Heavenly Father,
We will pray, read, pray more, meditate and ask You to simplify our hearts, minds and souls of all else but focus on Jesus, Your Son and our Savior and Teacher. We pray we will get ON THE WAY, building our faith stronger, by letting all else fall away. We pray our faith will cause God-like behaviors in us and through us that go beyond our wildest dreams…all because of Jesus…Simply Jesus.
In His Holy Name, we pray, Amen.