Episode Transcript
CONSECRATE
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
HEAR
1 John 3:9–10 (NIV)
No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.
CONSIDER
Okay, so I know I am born of God but I continue to sin, yet today’s text tells me that if I am born of God, I will not continue to sin. What gives?
If I am honest, I am a living, walking denial of the truth of this text. Either I am not born of God or I am not getting something.
Let’s just say I am missing something. Here’s how I have been thinking about that.
There are two basic kinds of orange juice: orange juice made from concentrate and orange juice squeezed from oranges. For those of us who didn’t grow up with Simply Orange, we made our orange juice from little frozen cans of gooey and strong orange syrup. Mom would thaw the can overnight and dump it into a pitcher the next morning. After running a half gallon of water into the pitcher, she would stir it vigorously. If the juice sat still for any length of time, the concentrate would settle to the bottom. It always had to be shaken up again.
This is a good analogy for our life of faith. When most of us became Christians, we got a good dose of the pure concentrate, but over time we have diluted it over and over again with more and more water. It hardly tastes like anything anymore. Oh, we’ve been shaken up a number of times over the years, and the taste will get stronger for a while, but over time it has lost its punch.
Then there’s the other kind of orange juice, like Simply Orange. Remember when that came on the market? The taste does not compare, nor does the price, to concentrated juice. Whenever I buy orange juice, I’m looking for three magic words on the label: not from concentrate. That’s another way of saying “the real thing.”
I can’t speak for you, but my problem is I’ve settled for a little “Jesus concentrate,” and slowly but surely, it has gotten watered down and lost its punch. I’m tired of watered-down faith. I want the not-from-concentrate Christian faith. I want “Simply Jesus.”
John is giving us a good shake with today’s text: “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.”
A good shaking up, however, will never get it done. What we need is the not-from-concentrate Simply Jesus stuff. How do we get it? First, we have to be sick and tired of the watered-down variety. That’s called holy discontent. Then we need to ask the Holy Spirit to lead us into this Simply Jesus way, the new not-from-concentrate way of belonging to God.
PRAY
Lord Jesus, you are the real thing. I want my life to be the real thing. I am tired of a watered-down version of faith. I want Simply Jesus. Give me the courage to name my discontent with where I am. Save me from the trap of shaming myself over my discontent. Let the truth set me free to live at a new level with you. Take me to a new place of life in you. I pray in your name, Jesus. Amen.
