Vision for Mission: Nurturing an Apostolic Heart

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Vi s i on for Mi s s i on: Nur tur i ng an Apos to l i c Hear t

Appendix 30 The Laws of Sowing and Reaping Rev. Dr. Don L. Davis

What do you think Christ means when He says that, if you enter [the kingdom], you have to enter it violently? It does not necessarily mean suddenly. Birth is not always sudden in either physical birth or spiritual birth. Even in the example we have just described, the change came over a period of two or three months. There wasn’t a single day when the lawyer was struck. Yes, the change may indeed be gradual, but the point is that it has to be a radical change in order to be genuine. Our human nature is such that nothing less will suffice. It has to be a change so great that, whether it occurs in a moment or a month or a year, we come out at an utterly different place. . . . There may be a much bigger life coming to us than we know; there may be greater steps ahead of us than we have ever dreamed. The life of full commitment is a life of such wonder that we ought to pray that God may bring us into it. But we cannot end with ourselves. Insofar as new life has come to us, we must try to bring new life to others. God, we are assured, desires new life for all, but it comes through human effort. Most people are reached one by one, as each is made to see both the inadequacy of his own life and the glory that might come in his life if he were really to give himself fully to the cause of Jesus Christ. But we must never suggest that such discipleship is easy or mild. Everyone who enters, says Jesus, enters violently or not at all. There is no easy Christianity; there is no mild Christianity. It is violent or it is nothing. Too often young people who leave home, students who quit school, husbands and wives who seek divorce, church members who neglect services, employees who walk out on their jobs are simply trying to escape discipline. The true motive may often be camouflaged by a hundred excuses, but behind the flimsy front is the hard core aversion to restraint and control. Much of our restlessness and instability can be traced to this basic fault in modern character. Our overflowing asylums and hospitals and jails are but symptoms of an undisciplined age. There may be many secondary causes and there may be many secondary cures, but somewhere behind them all is the need for discipline. The kind of discipline needed is far deeper than the rule of alarm clocks and time cards; it embraces self-restraint, courage, perseverance, and resiliency as the inner panoply of the soul. ~ Elton Trueblood. The Yoke of Christ . Waco, TX: Word Books, 1958, pp. 84, 89.