Chapter Seven
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I wouldn’t let Go
“Dear Susie,
Today Tippy (the family dog) tried very hard to get up to Cortez Road (the main highway near the home I grew up in) to get a big beautiful meaty ham bone that was in the middle of the road. There is so much traffic on that road that I am sure she will either be killed or hurt very badly. Several other dogs are wanting that ham bone too.
I wouldn’t let Tippy go onto the road for that bone. I held her so tight, she growled at me, she scratched me, and she even bit me, but I wouldn’t let go. She just wanted that bone so badly she didn’t know what she was doing. I brought her back home and put her into the garage for now. What do you think I should do, Susie?”
There is something to be said of a master who seeks to keep their dog from going onto a busy highway for a “big beautiful meaty hambone.” This is the desire I see in the note written by my loved one who sought, the best she could, to keep me from a dangerous and deadly situation. My note reads, “I wouldn’t let Tippy go onto the road for that bone.”
Recently I read a quote from Jim Cymbala, author of a book called Fresh faith. He writes, “People turn to drugs and alcohol because they don’t have a clue as to why they’re alive. Others turn to career achievement, or pleasure, or materialism…something, anything to fill the void. But it doesn’t work. God created them to worship and enjoy Him forever, but this awareness has been stolen from their consciousness”[1] Until Christ, we are blinded by the god of this age—Satan—so that we cannot see Christ. My loved one sought with all of her heart, as well as she knew, to keep me from the destruction I sought for myself. She tried not let me go onto the “road” for that “bone.”
Early on in my teenage years, I entered “step” programs, saw counselors, and read self-help books. Truly, those who loved me tried to rescue me from “being led away to death” (See Proverbs 24:11). Here’s the thing: the consequences of sin that were manifested in my life were not just an indicator that I had a heart issue but those consequences were indicative of a generational heart issue, a symptom of reliance upon the world rather than on Jesus Christ. If we, in this generation, are going to bring back those who have wandered from the truth and staggering toward slaughter, it will only be through the Gospel of Jesus Christ (See Luke 18:7-14: The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector)—not through a good education, a good job or career, a good husband or wife, or even “good” secular counsel or self-help books. Jesus Christ is the only way. Everything else we look to for salvation will seduce us, betray us, and lead us astray. Truly, the only answer for the world today, as the song goes is Jesus. “…above Him there’s no other, Jesus is the Way.”[2]
You see, we sing songs like this and we diligently go to church, but we fail to acknowledge God in all of His ways (Proverbs 3:5-6). And, I think this is the trap that we fall into in our American Culture Christian lives. We “do” what we think we should do in order to be a “good Christian” on Sunday but then on Monday through Saturday its “my life.” This was true for me. I can remember very clearly going to church on Sunday, bringing the children, and wanting to do what was “right.” All the while I had no personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I had no idea what that even meant. Until, I had no “good” works left to hang my “good” hat on. The woman at the well knows exactly what I am saying here. She was hanging onto the “good works” of her forefathers who worshipped on “this mountain” all the while she’d had five husbands and the man she was now with was not even her husband.
She was captive to the ideals of the matriarchs and patriarchs of her day. “Our father’s worshipped on this mountain.” Their worship left her thirsty for human affection. I read a quote today that said, “If we don’t teach our children to follow Christ, the world will teach them not to.” You see, if the Christian songs we are singing on the radio and the Word of God we are hearing on Sunday in our churches aren’t making their way into our hearts and transforming us in the way we love, then all we are doing is causing an insatiable hunger and thirst in our children’s hearts for human affection. Don’t get me wrong, human affection is good, if it is founded in Christ and an expression of the Father’s love, but it will never satisfy that deep part of us that longs for something more, something only God through Jesus Christ can give us, something for which we were created.
I see the Samaritan woman holding on tightly to the patterns of those who went before her and they kept her going “onto the road for that ‘big beautiful meaty ham’ bone.” Until, one day, Jesus Christ came along and helped her to let go of everything He’d already set her free from (even before the creation of the world)—the empty way of life handed down by her forefathers. The Apostle Peter confirms this thought when he writes under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through Him you believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and glorified Him, and so your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:17-21 NIV). You see, the song rings true: “Jesus is the answer!” He is the only answer and until we seek Him and find Him to help us hang on to the only thing that will ever satisfy us—Himself—we will keep going, and we will teach our children to keep going, “onto the road for that big beautiful meaty hambone” that will never ever satisfy our insatiable hunger for the ONE TRUE GOD, Jesus Christ.
[1] Jim Cymbala, Fresh Faith, page 11
[2] Andraè Crouch, Jesus is the Answer
Solid in the Faith 