Living in the Truth - Lent day 15

"And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning." - Jesus (John 15:27)

This past Saturday I flew from Tampa to Wichita, via Dallas/Ft. Worth. I was flying the friendly skies - up up and away, hoping the airline was ready when I was, so they could earn their wings every day and tell me I was now free to move about the country.

On one leg I sat next to a lawyer and former attorney general; the man was bona fide character. He noticed I was reading from my book, "GET REAL", and we talked about faith for a while.

• "My wife is really interested in that kind of thing," was all he would say.

He was returning from a mission to hand-deliver a check for $260,000 to a poor family in Florida. It was the last action of a complex trust settlement and the recipients did not know they were beneficiaries.

• "Mark," I said (not his real name). "Did they accept the check?"
• "Of course," he replied.
• "Were you enthusiastic about handing it over?" I asked. "Or did you just deliver the check and walk away?"
• "It was a great experience!" he said. "Why do you ask."
  

You see I was thinking about faith again. We have this amazing treasure; much more interesting than two hundred sixty thousand dollars. You can't even begin to price the value of a relationship with the Living God. Yet, more often than not, we fail to deliver the news with any real enthusiasm, and people decline the inheritance as if they're merely passing up another magazine subscription or a life insurance sales pitch.

I've been wearing out this central theme recently, but it bears repeating because the implications are so powerful and far reaching.

• "We need to live as if we mean it! Why? Because God most certainly does."
  

I'm convinced that if more people of faith lived in a spirit of authentic meaning, modeling an apprehension of the implications of Grace that re-tools us down to our very foundations as people, then it wouldn't be so hard, or so false, or so staged for us to share the good news. Instead, we'd simply have to live in a manner that reveals the truth.

Think about it.
- DEREK