It’s interesting that people pay money and take time off work to come to Discovery or Breakthrough seminars so that in a very real way they can stop “feeling good, looking good, being right, and being in control".
So why would someone want to pay for the chance to be uncomfortable, out of control, look bad, and allow themselves perhaps to be wrong about something? Well, I think that maybe that’s very much like what Jesus calls us to. Jim Elliot who was killed by the Auca indians he was a missionary to, said “He is no fool to give up that which he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot loose”.
And maybe it's because we may find that our certainties and belief systems built up in us may not be supporting the life we say we want to live. We may actually have conflicting intentions that we are not aware of.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who choose to go back into Nazi Germany to oppose Hitler and was executed in a concentration camp days before he would have been freed by the allies, writes in “The Cost of Discipleship”,
“ The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity (that is, in truth, into the absolute security and safety of the fellowship of Jesus), from a life which is observable and calculable (it is, in fact, quite incalculable) into a life where everything is unobservable and fortuitous (that is, into one which is in truth the infinite) into the realm of infinite possibilities (which is the one liberating reality). "
I’m not sure I get all of what Bonhoeffer is saying here but I get that to really follow Jesus and live a life of real freedom, we have to step out of what’s familiar and seemingly certain and be willing to live in the very real question of “what are my hidden motives and beliefs?” as I intentionally consider living in a way that others can experience as love.
As I write this I'm uncomfortably pricked in my conscience about my really being in the "safety and security of the fellowship of Jesus". But then I think that all I really know to do is to fall on him. God is the one "who works in us, both to will and to do".
And I can pray as David did "Investigate my life, O God, find out everything about me; Cross-examine and test me, get a clear picture of what I'm about." Psalm 139;23
