03/16/2019
As believers in Jesus Christ are we strangers to the world? Do we separate ourselves in our faith and behavior to the point where those who once called us friend can no longer recognize us? Our faith sets us apart from the sin that is in the earth, and although it pursues us like wolves; we are strangers to its pack. Jesus was like a foreigner to His own, just as we should be to ours.
“He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,”John 1:10-12 ESV
Our desire shouldn’t be to learn how to accept the world, but how to prepare it, as if it were a garden; to push our finger into the ground and ready it to accept us. Then, in the completeness of our faith we will rise up from earthly sin, and they will either feed on us, or become like strangers who will not come to the table.
“Lord, I don’t want to be a citizen where Jesus was an alien. His pierced hand has loosened the cords that once bound my soul to earth, and I now find myself a stranger in the land.” - Charles Spurgeon
My wife has lived in Nashville Tennessee all of her life, and her family is here as well, but as a child my family and I moved to Augsburg Germany for a number of years. There is something about living in a place where you don’t speak the same language, or have the same customs and mannerisms, as its inhabitants. I found a couple of things to be especially true, first is that it forces your family to become closer and look to each other for support as you struggle to live there, and the second is that when you finally return to that place you once called home you are changed, and those who once were your friends and family see you differently, and treat you as though you are a foreigner. This is likewise true in our faith.
As members of the family of Christ we find ourselves to be strangers in a sinful foreign land. Suddenly we aren’t as we once were, and we no longer speak and behave as the world around us. We have become aliens where we once were citizens, and often strangers to our own family. So, by this we see it isn’t specific to our neighbors and countrymen, but can divide us from our own families too.
“I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's sons. For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.”Psalms 69:8-9 ESV
What I found in Germany was that those who were aliens like me gathered together, and formed a bond with one another that allowed the group to survive in the midst of the foreign land we found ourselves surrounded by. It brought nuclear families closer together, and certain communities of like speaking and minded people as well. Even as we assimilated, learning to communicate, and to adopt some of the customs, we did so together. We grew closer to one another, and made judgements as to what parts of this new experience we could accept, and what parts we could not. As Christians in a foreign land we bond together into churches, and with our faith at its core we decide what, if anything, we find acceptable about the worldly culture that surrounds us. When this puts us at odds with our families it is especially difficult, but then again this is not new, as we read in Psalms 69, and as Paul writes to the Roman congregation...
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”Romans 12:2 ESV
My second point is similar to the first... in the first we became closer to one another in the midst of a foreign country, but in the second we face those same issues when we return to our own land. It is one thing to face change when surrounded by those you have never really known, but something quite different when you walk out of your church, and back into the community where you were raised. Foreigners, and strangers, see you as a Christian as if you have always been this way, they relate to you as a person of faith from the very moment they come to know you, but this is not the same as those who know you as a worldly sinner one day, and suddenly see you as a faithful believer the next. This divides you in a very different way, it separates families, and it separates you from the friends and life you once were a close and trusted part of. You are a stranger in your own family, and your own land, and it is hard to accept.
I look at these two variations in this way... when I am planting a garden I take my finger and insert it into the ground. When I do this it pushes the earth away and my finger takes up that space. This is my faith in a new country. Then I pull my finger out of the ground and as I do it leaves behind a hole... this hole is how my friends see my faith in the country where I have lived. What we must keep in mind is this... our goal wasn’t to become one with the ground, or to leave a hole, but to plant a seed, and grow a vine. So just like the vine, or the vegetables that we grow in our garden, we are different from the ground we find ourselves surrounded by, and rooted in.
So let’s ask ourselves... have we separated ourselves from the world? Are we strangers? Or, are we the finger that was once in the ground, and that became a hole so that a plant might rise up from where both have been... feeding the souls of the world?
“And he said to them, "Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”Mark 16:15 ESV
Prayer:
Father, I thank you for separating me from sin, and planting me in my faith so that I might feed the hungry souls with your Word, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Thank you Holy Father for the bounty you have created in this your garden, and for separating the weeds from the vines and dressing me as a plant which bears much fruit. I thank you Merciful Father for helping me to overcome my friendship with sin, and for calling me your friend instead. Make me a foreigner and an alien where Jesus is known as such, but help me Gracious Father to find fertile ground where He did, and to spread the seed of your Word in your garden... just As He did. Holy, Holy, Holy, are you my God who creates the garden, and makes the pastures green. Great are you who dropped the seed of my faith into the hollow left by your finger, and watered me with the living water of your Son Jesus. Your glory abounds Lord, and your will leads me on! Praised be your name forevermore, and by your power, and the name of Jesus, I pray that all strangers in my life become friends and family in my faith that is in you.
Rich Forbes