Faith unsettled?

 After this he went out and saw a tax-collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up, left everything, and followed him. Luke 5:27-28 (NRSV)

Though we are still very much in the midst of a challenging pandemic season, over the past few weeks I’ve found myself reflecting upon the early months of this year, especially the first few weeks of the pandemic. I recall reading a headline or two about a virus that was rapidly spreading in China, yet seemed so distant and removed from my everyday life that I must confess I paid little to no attention to it. Yet within a matter of days our entire world was upended and we all found ourselves quarantined and sheltered in our homes, afraid for our own health and those we love. Added to this was the economic impact of this pandemic, with millions unemployed overnight and financial markets crumbling everywhere we turned.

While you may have experienced the exact details of these events differently, the remarkable thing about this pandemic is that I am fairly confident that, on the whole, you can immediately resonate with this sense of confusion and disruption. And so, here is the question for all of us to ponder today, especially with a bit of distance now between us and those early days of this pandemic: how did you respond when your world was threatened and even turned upside down?

One of the best questions I’ve been asked in recent years is, “What comes out when you are squeezed?” If I am being honest, when I was squeezed this spring, a desire for stability and self-protection came out. My thoughts quickly turned to my employment, my mortgage, and my children’s school and extracurricular activities. On and on the list could go. And with each of these threatened I found myself feeling helpless and unable to control the outcome of the situation. Was this response motivated out of love for my family and a desire to protect them? Of course. Yet in that response I also discovered a deeply rooted sense of self-protection and self-sufficiency. While these may be great American virtues, they are not inherently Christ-like.

When Jesus calls Levi, he upends his entire world. Though hated by his Jewish peers for working with and for the Romans, Levi would have had significant economic and vocational stability. When Jesus says, “Follow me,” He invites Levi out of his comfortable and predictable life and into the joyous adventure of following Him. How does Levi respond? “He got up, left everything, and followed Him.”

As a deliberative and calculating person, Levi’s response is unsettling to me. Yet increasingly I wonder if “unsettling” is exactly what our Lord is aiming for with each and every one of us? Jesus longs to unsettle us from our self-assured complacency and reliance upon things of this world for our sense of comfort, protection, and self-worth. What would it look like for us to hear and respond to this invitation, and like Levi, leave everything and follow the call of Jesus upon our lives?

Love will win

 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith. 1 Peter 5:8-9

There are times in life when God’s love for us doesn’t seem real or obvious. It seems out of reach. But the devil is completely aware that you are Christ’s beloved. That’s the reason he wants to come after you and me. Christ is shouting His love for us from the Cross, through the wonder of creation, and through the pages of Scripture so that we’ll know without a doubt that He loves us madly.

• In John 15:9 Jesus announced the depth of His love for us when He said, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” You are loved by Jesus as He is loved by His own Father!

• In Phil. 1:8 Paul noted that Christ’s love is deep when he told the Philippians, “I long for all of you with the affection of Christ.”

• In 1 John 4:10 the Bible says that God demonstrated His love by sending His son to die on the Cross for our sins. Do you know anyone else who would die for you? Now that’s real love!

Numerous other scriptures describe God’s love. Think about the significance of this for a minute. If a woman has an enemy she loathes and wants to destroy, would she attempt to ruin what her adversary didn’t value? Of course not.

To cut to the deepest part of her opponent’s soul, she would want to ruin what her rival cherished most. In God’s world, this is you. You top His list. God is in a battle for your affection because of His affection for you.

This battle is described in John 10:10—"The thief [Satan] comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I [Jesus] have come that they [you and I] may have life, and have it to the full.” The semi- colon indicates that the battle is going on between Satan and Jesus. What’s all the fighting about?

You and me.

That’s right. We’re the object of the battle. We’re the prize. This means that we must choose who we’ll side with when Satan comes scratching at the door. Will we agree with the Adversary’s lies, or trust and follow the Lord?

A decision has to be made. Jesus never said, “I want to give you life, and Satan wants to destroy you—but you can remain neutral if you want.” Instead, he said as Joshua said, “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15). Because we’re the battle prize, we don’t have the privilege of standing on neutral ground. There really is no neutral ground in this matter.

I spoke with a young man who said he didn’t want to choose a side in the battle. “I don’t like thinking that I’m the object of a battle; I like the idea that I’m just on my own—I’m in control up here,” he said, pointing to his head with his index finger.

“Right,” I thought. “Why won’t he acknowledge his part in the battle?” Then it hit me: when we know that God cares for us, believing that we’re the prize in such a significant battle is a marvelous revelation of love. Imagine—God loves us enough to fight for us! We have extreme value to Him! However, if, like this man, we don’t want to submit to God’s authority, then admitting that we’re the battle prize is uncomfortable, because it means that we must be accountable for our actions, our attitudes, our lives.

In God’s economy we find not one independent human on earth; we all answer to someone—either God or Satan. Even though we may ignore the battle, it won’t go away. We can’t wish it away, and we can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist.

The question is—Whose side will we choose?