So often we hear Christians talking about the walls they have built up in their hearts. Something that keeps them from God, or from each other, or from some other noteworthy goal. The wall goes unseen for a long time, effectively sealing off parts of a persons life until *gasp* Jesus comes along and breaks down the walls like a wrecking ball and everyone is doing just fine and peachy again. I mean, they have to cry first and everything, but by and large things are on the right track.
Now if this has happened to you don't think I'm making fun of you, I'm not. I'm only trying to draw attention to how easy we think the process can be sometimes. When God is involved change happens quickly and without any effort on our part....right?
I think in our efforts to give God the credit for things that we couldn't or wouldn't have done on our own (and rightly so) we* sometimes shift the responsibility to the Holy Spirit to change us like a miracle. "Well I prayed that God would change my heart so...I guess my part is done." Even though we never say that, how often do we act like we think it's true?
The problem with Jesus coming in like a wrecking ball and knocking down all our walls at once is that it usually involves a major crisis. Which is fine. Pain is God's megaphone. But sometimes (preferably most of the time) our life is not in a state of crisis. So how do the walls come down?
They come down through an intentional and determined effort to unbuild them brick by brick. In my own life I have identified several beliefs and patterns of thought that have served me to a point but ultimately alienate me from the people I love most. The problem is that I can't tear the walls down instantly because so much truth and healthy thought is mixed in with the lies and with the unhealthy thoughts. People probably don't have walls for absolutely no reason. In fact, on an individual basis there is probably nothing wrong with most of he bricks in the wall, they are just stacked together in the wrong places.And so instead of asking God to bust down my walls today before lunchtime I'm going to ask him to help me identify the misapplication of all my erroneously laid bricks. Because I think I'm going to have to start unbuilding a wall piece by piece and putting those bricks where they belong. As I am doing this I will be listening to "The Wall" by Pink Floyd.
*Did I say "we" I probably should have said "I" but it sounds less incriminating this way.
1 comment:
Phil Collins used to talk about youth ministry with the following simile:
It's like getting students to vomit up everything they believe and then helping them pick through it to choose what they want to put back.
Besides being absolutely disgusting, I think this way of thinking about growing and changing also rings very true. It's a messy thing. It's a long process. It's not really something that is very fun (Personally, I avoid vomiting almost more than anything else in the world...Steve, you probably cannot resonate with that). But ultimately, that's what it's about: doing something not fun, not easy, not clean, but necessary.
This is what I thought about when I read your brick-by-brick metaphor. It's very similar. The human personality/soul/mind is such a complex thing that it follows that we would need to undergo fairly involved processes for God to "re-wire" us.
Well-played Steve. Let's dialog on how to do some bricklaying together.
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