Dana's Christian Journey

musings of a thankful cancer survivor

Author: Dana

  • Helper

    —

    Dana

    I was one of the ones who left his fishing nets and family to follow the Nazarene, the One whom John the Baptist called the ‘Lamb of God.’ Some thought we were crazy, but when Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God, we knew he was no ordinary teacher. And when we saw him feed the multitudes and walk on water and heal the sick and raise the dead, we knew he was no ordinary man. Jesus practiced what he taught and we believed he possessed the words of life. ‘Love’ was his greatest attribute and his greatest command. Christ said, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” How could we ever love the way he loves? It is true that on more than one occasion our teacher gave us the power to cast out demons and heal the sick, but could he also give us the power to love? Jesus said something at the end of his life none of us could believe: “It is for your good that I am going away.” How could this be true? Jesus said He would send a Helper, but how could anything be better than being with Jesus himself? We had learned to depend on him totally; how could we survive without him?

    Who was this Helper Jesus spoke about? “He lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you.” We were very confused by these words. “The Helper will teach you all things and remind you of everything I said to you.” After Jesus was arrested, we needed someone to remind us. In the chaos and confusion of the Garden, we all ran away. After the crucifixion, we hid in fear, thinking we would be next. But when our Lord appeared to us on the third day, our grief turned to joy and we realized Jesus even had power over the grave. Before ascending to Heaven, Jesus told us to go to Jerusalem to wait for the promise of the Father. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses.” On the Day of Pentecost we understood. Of course we missed him, but Jesus had come to live in our hearts. His character became our character; his life became our life; his love became our love.

    So if you ever wonder how you are going to follow Jesus when you can’t see him, trust what he taught about the Helper. You need as much help during your days on earth as we did in ours. And if you ask, like I did, “How can I ever love others the way Jesus loves me?” realize his love lives in you. He has not left you to do it by yourself. Trust and obey and depend on the Helper. He will not disappoint you.

    “And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” Romans 5:5

  • motivation

    —

    Dana

    So what’s your motivation for following Jesus? Is it for the blessings you will receive? Jesus once said, “I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life.” (Lk 18:29-30)

    But this was stated after the disciples left everything, not before. Why did they leave their fishing nets, jobs, and families to follow a Rabbi from Nazareth? They followed because they believed He is the Anointed One, the Christ, the Messiah, the promised Son of David who has authority to command. The disadvantage of living in a democracy with a “we the people” mentality is that we’re not used to being told what to do. Yet when we pray, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth (and in us) as it is in Heaven” we are really asking a King to have his way.

    The rich young ruler was a moral man, a law-abiding citizen who had obeyed the law of Moses since he was a boy (see Lk 18:1-25). But he could not be a disciple until he followed the instruction of the Christ. If he had sold his possessions, given the money to the poor, and followed the Master, it would have all been worth it, but he could not give up his stuff. God’s main goal is not that we be healthy, wealthy, and wise by human standards, but that we know him… which equates with eternal life. “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (Jn 17:3)

    Look what the King did for us: Motivated by love, Jesus died for all the world and now He calls his followers ‘friends.’ Should He not be all the motivation we need? When the Lord says, “Follow me,” He is telling us to love others the way He loves us. May we say ‘yes.’

    “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other the way I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” John 15:9-15

  • grace

    —

    Dana

    The power of the Sermon on the Mount is not simply a beautiful lesson… it is a message backed by a life. Jesus lived out the Sermon on the Mount and He invites us to follow in his steps with the help only the Holy Spirit can provide.

    On earth, Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God was at hand and He was the entrance. “For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” But what does this mean for us? Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s best known writing is “The Cost of Discipleship” in which he states that Jesus is calling us to really follow him. Without discipleship, Bonhoeffer argues that ‘costly grace’ turns into ‘cheap grace.’ Years before the beginning of World War II, this young German theologian looked at his ‘Christian nation’ and saw looming disaster. “Cheap grace has turned out to be utterly merciless to our Evangelical Church. This cheap grace has been no less disastrous to our own spiritual lives. Instead of opening up the way to Christ it has closed it. Instead of calling us to follow Christ, it has hardened us in our disobedience.”

    Jesus said the religious leaders of his day were hypocrites because they claimed to follow the Law of Moses while ignoring the very heart of God. “You give a tenth of your spices — mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former.” (Mt 23:23) What does Jesus say about those who claim to follow him but do not do what He says? “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (Mt 7:26-27)

    Bonhoeffer argued that the one who gives up self is the one who truly understands grace. “The only man who has the right to say he is justified by grace alone is the one who has left all to follow Christ. Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, and that the call is inseparable from grace. But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves.”

    “Happy are they who know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship.” So what is this discipleship “which springs from grace” that Dietrich proclaimed? It is one thing: following Jesus… each day… full of his Spirit… eyes on him… listening to his Word… obeying what He says… following Jesus.

    “And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple… In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:27, 33

    Quotes from “The Cost of Discipleship” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, first published in 1937 by Chr. Kaiser Verlag, translated by R. H. Fuller. Copyright 1959 by SCM Press Ltd.

  • decisions

    —

    Dana

    As a young man, Dietrich Bonhoeffer became a teacher and leader in the Confessing Church of Germany. With increased persecution of Jews and rumors of plans to eliminate all disabled ‘weak’ German citizens, Dietrich urged Christians to understand they were in a spiritual war and the only hope was to let God be the Center of everything. “It is a war that demands the commitment of one’s whole life. Is not God, our Lord, worthy of the struggle?”

    Decisions faced every Christian. In April of 1938 an ordinance was issued requiring every pastor to pledge allegiance to the Fuehrer, Adolph Hitler. On September 11 of that year, synagogues and Jewish businesses and homes were destroyed on Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. Through Scripture, Bonhoeffer believed God showed him that when his people were being persecuted, He was being persecuted. But what could one do?

    Early in 1939, Dietrich received the dreaded order to report for military duty. He had friends who declared themselves to be conscientious objectors, but they were quickly arrested and most died in prison. Other friends accepted the assignment of their government only to find themselves fighting in an unjust war. Dietrich knew too much of Hitler to even consider becoming a soldier. Christians with connections gave him a third option that involved an invitation to be a guest lecturer at a seminary in New York City. Bonhoeffer had been to America eight years earlier, and at the advice of his German brethren he accepted the invitation and gained a deferral from military assignment. Dietrich arrived in New York on June 12, 1939 but only stayed twenty-six days.

    “I have had time to think and pray about my situation and that of my nation and to have God’s will for me clarified. I have come to the conclusion that I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share in the trials of this time with my people. My brothers in the Confessing Synod wanted me to go. They may have been right in urging me to do so, but I was wrong in going. Such a decision a man must make for himself.”

    The clue that led to Bonhoeffer’s arrest in April of 1943 dealt with money that had been spent to get Jews out of Germany. And while Hitler ordered Dietrich’s execution in 1945 for being involved in a conspiracy to overthrow his government, it could be argued that a pastor died because he attempted to save the innocent. Hitler committed suicide three weeks after Bonhoeffer was hanged.

    From letters written in prison it was clear Dietrich was at peace with his decision… because he believed God led him. But he humbly admitted that decision-making is often difficult. “At the end of the day I can only ask God to give a merciful judgment on today and all its decisions,” he once wrote in his diary. Bonhoeffer taught that Jesus is the Way. Jesus taught that eternal life is knowing God. Maybe the best strategy for making decisions simply lies in knowing God on the Way. “Father, through your Son, help me to know You better. Amen.”

    “This is what the Lord says: ‘Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,’ declares the Lord.” Jeremiah 9:23-24

    All quotes taken from “Bonhoeffer” by Eric Metaxas, published in 2010 in Nashville , Tennessee by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  • regrets

    —

    Dana

    “I am tormented even now by the thought that I didn’t do as you asked me as a matter of course. To be frank, I can’t think what made me behave as I did. How could I have been so horribly afraid at the time? It must have seemed totally incomprehensible to you both, and yet you said nothing. But it preys on my mind, because it’s the kind of thing one can never make up for. So all I can do is ask you to forgive my weakness then. I know for certain that I ought to have behaved differently.”

    If you’re alive you’ve probably had occasion to write or think such a statement of regret.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this note to his twin sister, Sabine, in 1933 after he declined the invitation to preach her father-in-law’s funeral. Hitler’s agenda against the Jews was just becoming known and Christians in Germany were having to decide where to stand. If the famous “Aryan Paragraph” were adopted by the new government, all pastors with Jewish blood would be forced to step down from the ministry. Dietrich saw clearly where such discrimination would lead and began calling the church to be the church. He wrote, “What is at stake is by no means whether our German members of congregations can still tolerate church fellowship with the Jews. It is rather the task of Christian preaching to say: here is the church, where Jew and German stand together under the Word of God, here is the proof of whether a church is still the church or not.”

    Sabine’s husband, Gerhard, was a baptized Christian of Jewish descent. His father was not a Christian and when he died Dietrich was asked to preach the funeral. After trying to think through every angle and after listening to the council of others, Dietrich declined. In the biography “Bonhoeffer”, Eric Metaxas tells the story of the young theologian who learned to delve as deep into the mind of God as he possibly could to discern how to preach and live in an era of immense evil. “If you board the wrong train it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.” Dietrich’s message was that Jesus Christ was the only right train and Christians had to live boldly no matter what resistance existed. He believed his decision not to stand and speak at a Jewish funeral was a failure to practice what he preached.

    But moments of regret sometimes spur us to bolder living. At times we can only apologize, ask forgiveness, and ask God to help us learn from our mistakes. We all need his wisdom and his courage to speak out in our generation. We need eyes to see the devil’s work today that might not be quite as obvious as Satan’s strategies in Nazi Germany. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged three weeks before World War II ended for being a part of a plot to take the life of Adolph Hitler. The doctor at his prison at Flossenburg recalled this scene early on the morning of his execution: “Through the half-open door in one room of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.” No regrets…

    Dietrich was 39 years old when he died. At a memorial service held in London on July 27, 1945, Matthew 10 was read which contains these verses: “If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine. If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.”

    All quotes taken from “Bonhoeffer” by Eric Metaxas, published in 2010 in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

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