Today’s guest post is from Kenny Silva. In addition to being a close, trusted friend, Kenny is a Nashville-area realtor who is also passionate about leadership coaching and development. You can learn more about Kenny on his blog and follow him on Twitter.
One day, I happened upon an apple tree in my back yard. Unfortunately, there were no apples on it. This was a shame as I’m sure it had the potential to produce some beautiful, wonderful apples. I wanted so desperately for that to happen, so I committed myself to making it grow those apples.
First, I went out and bought an apple tree manual. In that book, I found every bit of information about what makes an apple tree great. I thoroughly searched out every instruction on cultivating the ‘ideal’ apple tree. I trimmed the failing branches and pruned the ugly leaves, just like the book said.
I read a Rick Warren quote a couple weeks ago that I haven’t been able to escape ever since.
The last thing many believers need to go to is another Bible study. They already know far more than they’re putting into practice.
Dang.
Reading that really challenged me. Its often easy for me to think that learning more about what Jesus said gets me off the hook for having to actually walk out and do what Jesus said do and be who Jesus said to be. Personally, I grew up in a church environment that knew all about “church” and all kinds of doctrine and could quote you half the Bible, but never really did anything with it but try hard to be “holy” and come back to church.
Often, people in the Gospels who got in the most trouble with Jesus were the ones thought they were working hardest on their spiritual life. They were trying so hard to be good that they could not stop thinking about how hard they were trying, and that got in the way of their loving other people.
That Jesus just spent time with the oppressed, dejected and broken isn’t what set Him apart. It was that He LOVED them. To be honest, anyone can serve a meal to a homeless person. You don’t have to believe in Jesus to serve the oppressed. But as followers of Christ, what should make us different than everyone else doing what we’re doing is who we are and how that filters how and why we do what we do.
Last night at Stretch, we talked about how as much as we love how the group has grown and we’ve been able to mobilize a lot of people to service and action, ultimately we’re doing a disservice if we only get people to serve a meal to a homeless person but don’t challenge them to LOVE that homeless person, look them in the eye, remember their name and dignify their humanity the way Jesus would have.
We’re about to dig into David Platt’s book “Radical” together and challenge each other to go deeper into community and service, and allow ourselves to be uncomfortable to a degree that we begin to understand what it means to live like Jesus tells us to.
Josh Wilson has a great new song called “I Refuse”. In this video, he talks about how he was praying for the people affected by the Nashville flood earlier this year, and praying for people to step up and come help. But then he wondered if it was possible for him to be hiding behind his prayer and using it as a defense and a cop-out to actually doing something himself. I was really moved by that and thought it was a perfect compliment to how all this fits together. We showed the video at Stretch last night and begin to challenge people with the awareness of the great needs that exist all around them and ask the hard question…
Sunday I made a decision I had been wrestling with for awhile.
Back story: I was baptized at the age of 11, during a revival at the church I grew up in. All the kids around my age were getting baptized and “saved” (which brings up theological issues that I don’t have the desire or patience to unpack here) around this time. While I don’t necessarily question my 11-year old sincerity at the time, I have often questioned my understanding of what exactly it was that I was doing. I had been in church all of my short 11 years and while I knew “church” very well and had been inundated with all degrees of religiosity, legalism and opinions and personal preferences sold as “doctrine”, I know for a fact that I did not know or “get” the Gospel.
In the denomination I grew up in, salvation wasn’t presented as by grace, through faith (Ephesians 2:8) in Christ ALONE, but rather it was sold as a proverbial “get out of hell, free” card. The salvation I grew up understanding and embracing wasn’t based on the cross, but rather on my ability to follow the formula, be good enough and adhere to enough rules that I would be acceptable to God which, from my experience, resulted in a whole lot of arrogance, self-righteousness and spiritual pride. THAT’S certainly not going to be a popular statement, but it is my story, nonetheless.
Looking back over my journey in the 23 years or so since then, I’ve gotten a lot of perspective and had a lot of time to think about what all that meant. Do I believe that I was “saved” to the greatest extent of my ignorance at that time? Yes. Do I still hold that experience as being sufficient and definitive of what it means to be a Christ follower in my life today? No.
A few months ago, someone asked me a question that is not all that uncommon in Christian circles, especially when you’re first getting to know someone.
“How long have you been a believer?”
My reply: “that’s a loaded question.” At that time, I was right in the middle of this whole season where Jesus was showing me my heart and subsequently wrecking it. Through a series of events which I have discussed quite candidly here, as well as some I haven’t talked about yet, my life had been wrecked and I understood, quite possibly for the first time in my life, exactly why I needed a savior. When I was asked that question, I realized that on one hand I had been a believer since 11 years old, but on another hand, and more importantly, perhaps only a few months. Over the course of the previous few months, the Gospel had dawned on me and I understood it in a way I never had before. Sure, I had “believed”, but NEVER like this. I realized that Christ’s goal wasn’t for me to stop going to the movies, wearing shorts or listening to rock music (don’t get me started), but rather to intentionally, passionately, relentlessly apprehend my heart.
The pain of self-awareness can be the beginning of spiritual transformation. Stop dodging yourself.
If ever there was a statement to encapsulate the past several years of my life, it was that one. All the painful and heart-wrenching months that had led up to right now were also transforming me in ways I could see and some I can’t yet. And yes, I had been religiously and methodically dodging coming face to face with myself for so long. When it finally happened, it undid and changed me.
All of that leads up to the present. For the past couple months I’ve been contemplating and wrestling with the idea of getting baptized again. I wanted to do it to mark this particular moment of my life in a public way and to say to God, “I am doing THIS, with understanding and gratitude of what You did and are doing.” So why was I wrestling with it? It’s simple. Pride. I was so afraid of what people might think, possibly not knowing my story, wondering why I’m JUST getting baptized, etc. I mean, SURELY, by 35 years old… I’ve already done THAT! God forbid anyone think I’m not who they perceived me to be!!! #pridesucks #faithfail
I wrestled with it for weeks, discussed it with some close friends but eventually talked myself out of it, though in my heart I knew I really wanted to do it. I knew that Baptism Sunday was coming up at Cross Point, but I just couldn’t bring myself to commit and follow through. I woke up this past Sunday morning a little upset with myself that I couldn’t seem to move forward past this stupid pride and fear and just do it.
As I was sitting in the 10am service, Blake Bergstrom brought a powerful message about the love of the Father, His passionate pursuit of our heart and jealousy for our affection… a theme I’ve recently been stuck on and blogged about. As the message ended, the worship team started to lead “How He Loves”. As soon as I heard them sing “He is jealous for me…”, I broke and knew today was the day. While I stood there and worshipped God, watching others be baptized, I decided that I would kick the pride and just do it. TODAY.
After the 10am service I shared with Blake what I wanted to do and why. I stayed for the 11:30 service and when it was time, I took the step, moved past my fear and stepped into the water with an understanding of what this meant and was baptized. I am proud to say that no stretchy pants were used in my baptism.
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. (Romans 6:4)
I did it for me. I did it for my heart. I did it to publicly identify myself with the death and resurrection of Christ and what that means in my life every single day.
NOTE: Today I am introducing the first of what will be a recurring series of guest posts from folks in the blogosphere whose voices I respect and want to introduce you to. The first guest blogger here at AnIdolHeart.com is Adam Smith a/k/a @Jackalopekid. I love the way Adam communicates and hope you dig it as well. Enjoy!
(This is the new official logo for AnIdolHeart)
Hello, folks! My name is Adam Smith and I’m the author of jackalopekid.com. I just moved from Atlanta, GA to Denver, CO about four months ago. The weather is colder here, the scenery is better and people laugh when I say words like “folks” or “y’all”. It’s quite spectacular.
Well, you’re probably asking, “What is a jackalopekid?” Well, it’s a nickname I got growing up, and it just stuck. It’s crazy I know, and for that I apologize. You probably haven’t visited my blog yet for that one reason. Again, I apologize.
So now that we have that out of the way, I am truly honored and excited to write here on AnIdolHeart. Actually, this is the subject I want to write on. “An Idol Heart”. The title alone speaks volumes to me. I actually just started reading this blog and immediately added it to the RSS feed after reading this, as should you. You see, when you read that post, I hope you feel the realness and substance that I did. I love that junk. You want to know why? It’s because everybody has a story. No matter what you’re going through or what you have been through in the past, someone else out there can relate.
Maybe you can relate to my story. I grew up in a Christian home and knew about God, but I didn’t KNOW God. Maybe you understand that… Well, I found Him as a teenager and never looked back after that moment. The one thing that held me back to giving my entire life to Jesus, that gave me an idol and complacent heart, was religion and pride. Those are two really dangerous things. I really didn’t realize they were there to tell you the truth.
If I had to say one thing that holds me back today, that would probably be fear. It’s a fear of what people think, a fear of the unknown and a fear of being the husband that God wants me to be. You can probably relate to my story now, huh? But again, this is real life stuff I deal with and maybe you do, too.
So I have a question for you today, new friends— What is something that is holding you back?
