Explaining The Journey

On one hand talking about myself in any conversation can be a self-centered, me-me-me first and center matter of pride. It can also be an explanation of what God has done and is doing in my life and hopefully a witness to encourage Christian discipleship or a closer-to-Jesus possibility for a pre-believer with whom I'm chatting.

Of course you know -you- better than anyone but perhaps your spouse or a truly close, informed mentor or accountability person so using yourself as an example makes sense -if done in actual humility and pointing to God for His glory and honor -not your own.

I note that Jesus meeting the two sad, confused, bewildered disciples from Emmaus on their journey first asked them questions, then listened to their story, heard their grief, then spoke of Himself by unlocking the scriptures that spoke about Him.

To be clear, I'm NOT saying you and I can do exactly as He did in the exact sense because He was teaching them via the many prophecies and various statements God's Word declared who the Living Word of God/Messiah truly was and it is: Jesus Himself.

What I'm suggesting is that our lives as His disciples should so reflect the Lord's Word, so link with Jesus to the extent we are living out and within those portions of scripture and thus help define our story as it is fully embedded in His. Further, humility in such dialogue should include "the other side of the Word of God", that being the plenty of times we've put our foot in our mouth, said and done foolish things like Peter, hopefully not as horrid as did King David or worse, Saul... but being honest about our many flaws, gaps and miss-deeds.

The idea that a good witness for Jesus never includes our own mess is part of what turns people away from relationships with Christ-followers and the churches. Lack of integrity regarding our own sins, slips, failings is in part ignoring the -whole- story of our lives in the Word of God. That's "the other side" of the scriptures in both Testaments that speak truth and bring credibility to the Bible, the churches and to we as individual disciples who seek to live out the authentic story of God's view of things- which is truth applied, truth walking, truth talking directing others to Jesus Himself, "the way, truth, life"!

And as always, thanks for stopping by. -Glenn