Need Some Fresh Air? (excerpts from an interview with Chris Hodges) Everyone has already experienced this kind of culture. Fresh air is a culture where things thrive. All of us have been in either life-giving cultures or we’ve been in life-taking cultures. We’ve all been in homes where it just was empowering and life-giving and free and so you wanted to be around. Others were raised in homes where you simply couldn’t wait to get out of it. We’ve been in churches in the same way. They’re using the same songs, same Bible, but one of them is life-giving and one of them, you’re just looking forward to it being over. It’s these life-giving fresh air kinds of cultures that make everything in our lives thrive. I base my book around a very obscure little verse out of 2 Timothy where the Apostle Paul referred to this guy named Onesiphorus who visited Paul while he was in prison. Paul said “his visits revived me like a breath of fresh air.” Paul was saying that when this guy came around, he was encouraged and free again. It was all life-giving again. In one word, God wants relationship, not religion. Jesus himself said it in Matthew 7. He said there’s going to be a lot of people who will show up in Heaven on Judgement Day who would’ve done the religious motions – calling him Lord, the miracles in His name – he lists all these religious things. Then he says I’m going to tell them plainly “Away from me because I never knew you.” The word “know” there is the same word that the Bible uses where it says, “A man knew his wife and they had a baby.” It’s an intimate term. In John chapter 14, Jesus said, “If you love me, you will do what I command.” For years, ...here’s how I read it. I heard, “If you love me, you’ll prove to me you love me by doing what I told you to do. If you love me, you will do what I command.” But that’s not what it says. It says, “If you loved me, you will do what I command. All you need to do is fall in love with me and my commands are going to be the byproduct of that love relationship.” And I think there’s a comma there between those two phrases. Some people live on the “Do what I command” side of that comma but we need to get back to the “If you love me” side of that comma. When you’re in love, the relationship becomes this fresh air internal motivation. Here’s the simply way to say it. It goes from the “have to do it” to “you want to do it.” From the “got to” to the “get to.”
Posted on: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 12:00:00 +0000
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