Up Close and Personal

“God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son”.  God gave the most personal gift that can be given.  He gave Himself.  One of the hardest parts of discipleship is the contribution of yourself into the life of another.  Matt Ayers explains this well.  He says, "I think there are a number of reasons it's so hard, but the number 1 is (at least by my estimation) the high level of emotional involvement. ... When we love someone there is great risk because we’re building ourselves into them. Making disciples means loving people, there’s no way around this. Discipleship without love is probably more like “coaching”; it certainly isn’t discipleship. Jesus, who defines discipleship, did what He did out of love."  There is an emotional involvement and when something requires an emotional involvement, we too often back up.  Either we're not emotionally secure enough to disciple or we don't want to get emotionally involved and get hurt.  I'm starting to wonder how much of this is just plain being yellow or cowardice on my part.

The cable TV show “Brain Games” did a good study on this.  Apparently we are very good at making a reasonable life or death decision until it gets personal.  They created a scenario where you are at a train switch.  A train is coming from you left and on your right there is a switch for the track that you control.  On one side are four workers and on the other side is one worker.  Do you move the switch so the train will only kill the one worker?  Everyone said yes.  They then changed the condition and made that one person your Dad or Brother.  Almost everyone hesitated and was not sure they could pull the switch.  They then changed the conditions again and put you on a bridge over the track.  The train is coming and the four workers are on the track but there is a really large person on the bridge next to you.  You know that you can push the large person off the bridge onto the track and stop the train.  Would you do it?  No one said they would do it. 

Apparently, once it gets personal, we become very shy about the decision, to the point of being unwilling to make a decision that causes the death of someone close to us, much less, ourselves.  And if we have to put our hands on someone that makes it personal as well.  Yet God made it personal.  He put His hands and feet in our world, but He didn't stop there.  He is willing to share His Spirit with us.  He is as personal and close as it is possible to be with another.  Does it pain God when we are unwilling to be so close, when we reject Him, or when we don't fully trust Him and make our own plans?   Most certainly.  But He is still there, willing to be personal and emotionally involved.  

We need to learn to do the same.  We should so love the world because God so loved the world and if He was willing to give Jesus for it, then we should be willing to give the Jesus in us for it also.