If you’ve ever fallen in love you know
that it’s a scary, delicate and uncertain process. Sometimes we get it right,
sometimes we get in the way of the natural progression of things. Other times
we fall in love and we can’t even fully explain how and when it really
happened. All we know is that one day we woke up and realized that we could not
live without this other person in our lives. There is no science to the process
of falling in love.
What I think we fail to realize is
that, conversion to Christ is really a process of falling in love with Jesus
over a period of time. When we attempt to make conversion to Christ a process
that
involves a series of pre-determined
steps and a progression of words, or a specific prayer, we have seriously
interfered with the process. Falling in love is something that is far outside
our ability to grasp and it’s impossible for us to coordinate this from the
outside.
I can remember when I fell in love
with my wife, Wendy, back in college. I can remember that first time I ever saw
her. I was sitting on a bus that was headed for a leadership conference across
the State. Several of us were attending this event with an oncampus student
ministry. That’s when Wendy walked into my life. She boarded the bus with her
blue-jean backpack slung over her shoulder. Her beautiful blonde hair was
pulled back into a ponytail, exposing her gorgeous blue eyes and her wide,
wonderful smile.
As she walked towards my seat and
eventually sat in front of me I remember thinking, “Wow. Who is she? I’ve not
seen her around campus before.”
Before the bus left the parking lot
she and I were engaged in small talk. By the time the bus got in motion,
however, we had both settled back into our seats. We barely interacted for the
rest of the trip.
A few weeks later I joined the drama
group she was leading, just to be near her. Over the next few months I got to
know her better. Our first few dates were awkward and we very nearly abandoned
our relationship because of the difficulties we were having with communication
and trust. But one night we spent a few hours on the phone talking things out and
ended up praying together that God would either bless our relationship, if it
was “meant to be”, or let it die since it wasn’t going so great anyway. After
that night our relationship improved dramatically. After formally dating for a
few months I asked her to marry me and a year later we were married. Now, what
if I took my own personal experience of falling in love and created a formula
by which all others who wanted to fall in love must follow? Would that make any
sense? Would that be wise? Would it work?
Hopefully we can plainly see that to
expect everyone to fall in love the way that we fell in love is ridiculous.
Yet, in the Church we have formulated a process for falling in love with Jesus
based entirely on tradition, and if people miss a few steps along the way we
are quick to point out that they have failed to fall in love with Him in the
acceptable way.
Doesn’t this seem foolish? My prayer
is that we will begin to see evangelism, and conversion, and discipleship to
Jesus as an organic, creative, and miraculous process, as mysterious and
marvelous as falling in love.
