In discipleship, there can be two extreme reactions to the evidence of God’s grace. Review the two questions below. How do you assess yourself?
Before discipling others, are you willing to embody what you want to make a reality in someone else? Sadly, some people want to influence others because they are running away from their own inner demons. We can be quick to try to put the world right to compensate because we are not yielding to the Holy Spirit so that he might put us right.
The other extreme is to exalt personal piety. Are you so concerned to be put right in your inmost being and personal behavior that you regard any attempt to bear God’s image to the world as a distraction? A marker of this thinking is if you view your “personal relationship” with Christ the focus of your devotion, while viewing, making disciples and being a missionary to the world as optional displays of God’s grace to the world.
Where do you find yourself when you ask these questions? Are you experiencing balance in your desire to live by grace and demonstrating God’s grace to the world?
Hopefully, as you assess, you would agree with me that It is unwise to run from our own brokenness. Let us not make perfection our goal and distort the gospel either. For the glory of Christ, enter brokeness willingly and remember that we are commissioned to be missionaries and agents of change in God’s creation.
