Life-Altering Moments of Truth

I don’t know about you, but looking at my history, I can see certain points where the course of my life was dramatically altered by a “moment of truth.” In other words, I encountered a certain truth or revelation that shifted my paradigm, and after that moment, life looked different for me. Looking back, I can see how my path shifted from that point on.

I think this happens to all of us. Sometimes that “moment of truth” is a revelation from God, or sometimes it’s a wake-up call of something happening of which you were perhaps previously unaware. These moments of truth can be places of great joy, or great devastation and trauma. Either way, your world is rocked when they happen.

For me, my journey for the past couple of years has been marked by several of these life-altering moments. Some have been painful wake-up calls, but many of them have simply been truths that have changed my worldview, I believe for the better. And it is these truths I’d like to share with you today.

I may take other posts to elaborate on some of these…but for now, here are some of the life-altering truths I’ve encountered in the past couple of years:

• The removal of the sacred/secular mindset, and the realization that God is engaged in every part of my life. I often refer to this as “Jesus in the everyday.” The idea that all of life is sacred when it is lived unto God has drastically changed the way I see life and spirituality. It gotten rid of a lot of my fears of “defilement”, exposed the false notion that “Christian” products are somehow more sanctified than others, and even helped me think about issues like sin and temptation in a more healthy manner. It is helping me more and more to live life in the now, to embrace the wonder of the moment and miss fewer opportunities. It has also greatly expanded my picture of how worship and ministry can be expressed.
• The Bible, while the inspired Word of God, must be interpreted. People who dogmatically argue their theology (i.e., “I’m right, everyone else is wrong”) by claiming they are going solely by the Bible are telling only a half-truth. What they are actually doing is arguing based on their interpretation of the Scriptures. So much of discipleship is an ongoing process of wrestling with Scripture, not only to learn what it says, but what it means, and how to live it out; and in so doing, we all inevitably bring our background and our biases into the picture. Understanding this has not necessarily changed my theology, or what I believe to be true about the Bible; but it has definitely made me more respectful of other viewpoints, even when I disagree with them. It has also helped me hold my own theology more loosely, more humbly, knowing I am fully capable of error. (The only place my intolerance has grown has been toward those who dogmatically browbeat others with their viewpoint. I have no stomach for that anymore.)
• The “Missio Dei”–the mission of God. The realization that God is continually at work in the earth to reveal His kingdom to mankind and to draw us unto Himself, and that any true ministry we engage in is part of God’s mission. This has drastically altered how I see the ministry. I have come to realize that there is much more to “Father’s Business” than clergy-based, institutional-type ministry and outreach. The realization that for anyone I encounter, Jesus was present with that person before I was, and will remain there after I part ways with that person–this has been extremely freeing for me. Seeing mission this way opens one’s eyes to things God was doing all along that we didn’t even recognize before. It has restored my sense of wonder.
• The church is not defined by institutional Christianity. I think I’ve known this logically, but it has come alive to me in the past couple of years. So much of what we take for granted as part of our church culture is actually man-made stuff we back up with Scripture, when actually there is something much deeper underneath it all. The organism of Church was created by God; the institution of church was invented by man. Understanding the difference, and living in that understanding, has opened my eyes to how many more different ways “church” can be expressed than just a building with a steeple filled up with people. It has freed me to embrace a richer, more organic, more real expression of my faith.

I could probably come up with more, but right now these four life-altering moments of truth are the ones foremost in my mind. And these truths continue to reshape me.