So much for your walk as a Christian being private (as opposed to personal).
The importance of listening for God’s voice, the very voice of Jesus communicated to us via the Holy Spirit, can be easily underestimated. We can be lulled into thinking that it doesn’t matter if we try to take it to the next level or up a notch in our own walk with Christ. But it does.
Here’s something I gleaned from After You Believe, by N. T. Wright, a Brit who is a first-rate New Testament scholar and a heavy hitter when it comes to what it means to be a Christian:
One recent writer speaks of “cascading grace”: when God does something in one person’s life and through his or her work, other people see it and think, “Do you suppose that could happen here?” and a spark turns into a flame–often a flame of a subtly different color. Imitation need not be slavish. Let by the Spirit, it can be a means toward something quite new. (pp. 269-270)
Can you imagine a conflagration (think of a contagious fire) of Kingdom activity that results from the spark the Holy Spirit lights in you?
Just because you listen for the beep of your watch, then listen for God, and then take that next step, climb that next hill, burst through that next barrier, turn in a new direction, take on a new challenge …
Grace upon grace upon grace–showering the earth with the glory of God.
Just because of the Spirit’s activity in one person–you!
Cascading grace.
A cataract, a series of waterfalls, of grace.
It’s source from the throne of God in heaven. Flowing through us. Catching others in its current. Resulting in new cascades of grace.
It’s a Kingdom-thing.
Jesus said, ”The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”–Matthew 13:31-32 (NIV)
See? Looks like cascading grace, doesn’t it?
Elsewhere, Jesus said that faith that was as small as a mustard seed could do amazing and great things.
I believe him.
So why keep our walk private, when it could be both personal and as large as the Kingdom of God?
And so it is the story of how I came to Horizon…one person…carrying a Bible…walked into a coffee shop to meet with an old friend after 40 years of not seeing them. The “old friend” had previously shared that she had not “been allowed” to have God in her life for a very long time. When she asked, “Why the Bible?” he answered, “We’re going to have a Bible study.” And so the seed was planted…and once again, after so very long of hearing, “There is no God,” she found that HE had never left her…but instead had been carrying her all those years…leaving one set of footprints in the sand…