One Thing I Do

Last month, our church held another successful Vacation Bible Camp. The kids learned, sang, prayed and had fun. Since our granddaughters were there, along with their Papa, who led the music, I’ve been remembering my own Vacation Bible School experience.

Our little Quaker church didn’t offer anything like that. But, luckily for me, there was a Baptist church across the street from my grandparents’ house. It had VBS every summer, and one year, I got to spend a week with my Gram and Granddaddy so I could go.

I’d never had so much fun in church! We were a pretty subdued group at Lick Creek Friends Church. But in this Baptist Church, we actually had contests to see who could sing the loudest— right in the sanctuary! We sang “DEEP and WIDE” (with corresponding hand motions), and “I’M IN THE LORD’S AR-MEE,” (complete with marching and salutes). We had crafts and cookies in the church basement, and Bible stories on a flannel board.

On the last night, Brother Forbes did an altar call, in which he invited us to come forward and ask Jesus into our hearts—something else that never happened at my church. We didn’t talk about being “saved.” So this was a new, kind of confusing idea for me. I was only seven years old…and I wasn’t sure what I needed to be saved from!

All of the kids were under the age of twelve, but they did seem to understand, because one by one, lots of them walked to the front of the church. When my friend Joyce went up, I did too. I’m sure Brother Forbes prayed over us, but I really don’t remember much except that the adults in the sanctuary were all smiling, so pleased with us. And I felt excited that somehow Jesus would now be in my heart.

The next day, I told my sister Becky about going forward. I told her that Brother Forbes had said all we have to do to be a Christian is to invite Jesus in. She’s six years older than I am, and with a look that only an older and much wiser sibling can give, she said, “There’s more to it than that!”

She didn’t say what that something more might be. But I didn’t care. I was a child who felt a little closer to the Jesus in the Bible stories, the Jesus in the only picture hanging in our church—Jesus, surrounded by children, and holding a child on his lap. 

Over the years, I’ve come to see that, in fact, my sister was right. Whether we have a moment of sudden clarity in which we accept God’s love, or we’ve followed Jesus all our lives…there is much more to being a Christian than simply claiming Christ as Lord and Savior. We know that God calls us to more. And we know it because we find it again and again in scripture.

In the Old Testament, Moses brings the people God’s rules of conduct—the Ten Commandments. In the New Testament, Jesus boils those ten down into two essential commands: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. And You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Mark 12:30-31)

I don’t know about you, but I almost prefer the ten! They’re more specific, somehow more do-able. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Don’t kill. But the two Greatest Commandments can seem impossible—at least impossible to do every minute, every hour, every day.

There’s more. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches: Be perfect… as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48) On the surface, that specific teaching sounds even more impossible. As we define the word today, “perfect” means entirely without fault or defect. Impossible!

But why would Jesus give us a command he knew we could never achieve?

The Greek word used in this scripture is teleios. It’s generally interpreted to mean perfect, but it can also mean to be complete, to be full grown…in other words, to be mature. Jesus is telling us that we must mature in faith, that our relationship with God must be ever deepening, ever growing. If we define “perfect” in this way, becoming like Jesus is a journey that continues every day of our lives, a journey that we choose to make, but that God will bring to completion—when we leave this world for the next.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul shares his own struggle with this transformation—to become more like Jesus, to share in his suffering, as well as his resurrection to new life. He writes:

I do not regard myself as having taken hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize ahead…the call of God in Jesus Christ. (Philippians 3:13-14, NASB)

Paul uses the metaphor of running a race, of pressing on, of continuing, one foot after another. Like a runner, our focus is to reach the end—to complete the race—not to continue looking backward at what we’ve done and where we’ve been, but to stay focused on where we are headed. Paul is saying that we’re to keep going in our commitment to be transformed, to become more like Jesus, no matter what our lives have been like, no matter where life has taken us in the past. Paul spoke as one who knew this truth; after all, he was a persecutor of Christians before he met Jesus on the road. He had much to turn away from, as he turned towards his savior.

Friend, the Bible tells us that when we were children, we spoke like children, we thought like children, we reasoned like children. But when we became adults, we put an end to childish ways. That early experience at VBS certainly helped to shape the beginnings of my spiritual journey. But, like Paul, I certainly have not achieved the goal. Like Paul, I press on.

And so do you.

May the blessing of God be upon you, as you continue on your journey.

Lou Ann