This post is from a larger series under the cat­e­gory Friend to Jesus. It is a detailed explo­ration of the three stages of faith: the believer, the ser­vant and the friend of God. If you want to start at the begin­ning, it begins with the post How Look­ing at a Car­avag­gio Paint­ing Can Change Your Life and then con­tin­ues chronologically.

It is the char­ac­ter­is­tic excel­lence of the strong man that he can bring momen­tous issues to the fore and make a deci­sion about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alter­na­tives they have not cho­sen them­selves. Diet­rich Bonhoeffer

The break­ing of a wave can­not explain the whole sea. Vladimir Nabokov

When I was about eleven years old, we made our first trip as a fam­ily out to Delaware which we con­tinue even to this day. It was a remark­able and mag­i­cal vaca­tion for me. It was the first time I tasted salt water taffy. The first time I went clam­ming and crab­bing. And most impor­tantly, the first time I swam in the ocean. I will never for­get that sum­mer and I will tell you one of the rea­sons why. When it came to vaca­tions, we had a tra­di­tion in our fam­ily. On long trips, my mom would take me to Kroger and I could get a mess of mag­a­zines or books, which she hoped would keep me busy on the long car ride. I remem­ber vividly what I chose the day before we left on that trip. I got a bunch of books on sharks and shark attacks.

We lived just south of Chicago and I think by the time we had made it through Ohio, I had read each book—cover to cover—all four of them. When we reached Delaware, I fell in love with the ocean—I had never seen it before and I couldn’t wait to jump in. Each day of the vaca­tion that week, that’s where you find me—swimming in its waters. On one of our last days, I became more coura­geous and I swam out fur­ther into it than I ever had before. I felt like being a lit­tle dan­ger­ous and wanted to see how far out I could swim with­out scar­ing me out of my wits. When I reached the far­thest reaches, well beyond other swim­mers, I began tread­ing in the water, float­ing around, and enjoy­ing one of my last days of vaca­tion. I was prob­a­bly a good twenty yards away from the near­est swim­mer. The sun was high in the sky and warm on my face and I felt great…

Until I noticed some­thing odd. As I looked down the entire beach front, every­one was get­ting out of the water. I imme­di­ately won­dered what was going on. As I was tread­ing water, I heard words which I will never for­get. The life­guard shouted through his mega­phone, “Every­one out of the water; every­one out of the water; SHARKS! SHARKS!” I had never heard more fright­en­ing words. I turned around and sure enough, swim­ming out near a tanker fur­ther out were about a dozen fins. Imme­di­ately, I swam toward the shore as fast as I could. There was only one problem—all I could think about was all of those shark attack sto­ries I had read. I knew every­thing about sharks. I knew how they attacked, who they attacked, and when they attacked. At that very moment, my sin­gle thought was this—a shark’s favorite meal were adven­tur­ous boys from Illi­nois! I kept pump­ing my arms; kick­ing my legs; and flay­ing away as fast as I could in that cool salt water. Finally, with­out a scratch on me, I crawled up onto shore. Just then, stand­ing above me was the life­guard and into his mega­phone he yelled, “False alarm. Just dol­phins.” After that, I decided it was best just to make sand­cas­tles and didn’t go swim­ming the rest of that vaca­tion. Here is a truth I learned that day—sometimes, things aren’t what they seem.

And some­times peo­ple aren’t what they seem.

This takes us to our next point about who believ­ers are. Typ­i­cally, believ­ers want to have it their way; they want to lead two dif­fer­ent lives. They try to have their cake and eat it too; believ­ers try to see if they can pull off liv­ing the new and old life at the same time. But it never works. Again, in the book of Rev­e­la­tion, in his words to the church of Laodicea, Jesus shares with us the descrip­tion of one who has been a ded­i­cated believer too long: “I know you inside and out, and find lit­tle to my lik­ing. You’re not cold, you’re not hot—far bet­ter to be either cold or hot! You’re stale. You’re stag­nant. You make me want to vomit. You brag, ‘I’m rich, I’ve got it made, I need noth­ing from any­one,’ obliv­i­ous that in fact you’re a piti­ful, blind beg­gar, thread­bare and home­less.” (Rev­e­la­tion 3:15–17, The Message)

Ouch! That’s what I love about the Bible, it always tells it like it is. Believ­ers are nei­ther this or that; they try to be all things. Again, this was Judas: he tried to remain friends with those who hated Jesus and those who were also his clos­est confidants—the dis­ci­ples. He tried to be spir­i­tual and car­nal at the same time. In the same day, Judas most likely would have lunch with the Phar­isees and then go have din­ner with Jesus and the dis­ci­ples. Judas was sit­ting there nod­ding in agree­ment with Jesus when he was on the moun­tain teach­ing the throngs of peo­ple, and then later that evening nod­ding again, but this time, with his friends from pre­vi­ous days. Most of the time, Judas was doing his own thing and when it was con­ve­nient, he would do the Jesus’ thing. There was lit­tle con­sis­tency in his life and per­haps at times, he would see the truth in Jesus’ words, but in the next moment, he was off doing his own thing, find­ing his own way in life. Sim­ply put, Judas was a fraud and this type of liv­ing cost him his life, lit­er­ally hang­ing on the limb of a tree when he took his own life.

Going back to our the­o­log­i­cal primer in an ear­lier chap­ter, in this world there are two king­doms vying with one another. This is a sim­ple fact. Again, as Bob Dylan wrote, you are either in one camp or in the other. This is not a both/and ques­tion; it is an either/or one. Either you are with Jesus, or you are not with Jesus. These are his own words. You can­not sit on the fence. Jesus emphat­i­cally joins the ques­tion by say­ing: “Who­ever is not with me is against me, and who­ever does not gather with me scat­ters.” (Matthew 12:30) Every day you get up you have to decide, am I with Jesus or not?

If you think about it, it was always a mis­nomer to call Judas a dis­ci­ple or fol­lower of Jesus. Per­haps for a time he was, a very brief time, but like the seed that fell on stony ground Judas sprouted up, but only for a brief moment (Matthew 13:1–23). This is exactly why it is so very impor­tant to con­tin­u­ally move deeper with Jesus. Every day we need to let him fur­ther into our lives, to let him invade every inch of our being, let him con­trol each and every mat­ter. And this is why this is so important—all of this is for our ben­e­fit any way. I have learned in my life so well that when I stay close to him, every­thing is good, no mat­ter what the sit­u­a­tion or cir­cum­stance. This is why I am cer­tain that when he con­tin­ues to pull me back, when I begin to stray from him, it’s for my good, not his. It’s for me, first and fore­most, and it is because of this tremen­dous con­cern that he has for me that he will never let me go.

This post is from a larger series under the cat­e­gory Friend to Jesus. It is a detailed explo­ration of the three stages of faith: the believer, the ser­vant and the friend of God. If you want to start at the begin­ning, it begins with the post How Look­ing at a Car­avag­gio Paint­ing Can Change Your Life and then con­tin­ues chronologically.