Laying Down Your Life?
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I am planning to preach from 1 John 3 this Sunday. Typically this means that I run the passage through my 5Q discipleship groups to see what I can glean from the guys.
This morning, one of them thought the Holy Spirit was highlighting this verse for him: “He laid down his life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” (3:16/CSB) As far as some personal commentary my friend said that he was at that moment thinking of two guys both of whom seemed to understand, with the testimony of their lives, the laying down of their lives as not some moment in time when they went out with some glorious blaze of glory.
On the contrary, the “laying down of life” had been done in the context of decades of staying in the same church, in the same community, slogging away doing a noble thing through the ups and downs, the joys and the frustrations, the blessings and the agonies of being incarnate over the long haul.
That blessed me to no end.
John Piper once differentiated between adrenal and coronary Christianity. In every faith walk there are necessary adrenal moments, he suggested. But the basis for pilgrimage is a heart faith that goes “thump-thump, thump-thump” across years, months, years, and decades.
Lay down your life. Occasionally, that laying down will be adrenal. But for the most part, it is the thump-thumping across an era.