July/August 2001
Light Shines in My Darkness
by J. Michael Feazell
| God wanted a relationship of love, not a relationship of rules. God wanted my heart and soul, not just my compliance. |
In early 1991, my grandmother was close to the end of her life, and she knew it. I had flown to Amarillo, Texas, joining other family members to celebrate her eighty-fifth birthday. As she and I sat talking in the small room of her convalescent home, I could see she had something on her mind. She put her hand on mine, looked into my eyes and asked slowly, in her stroke-slurred speech, "Mick [she always called me "Mick"], do you love Jesus?"
I'm chagrined to say that I was uncomfortable with the question. We just didn't talk like that in the church I was brought up in. That was Protestant talk. Syrupy sweet. We wanted to be asked, "Do you obey Jesus Christ?" We didn't like to say "Jesus" without adding "Christ." That sounded manlier, more powerful to us. Just saying "Jesus" sounded wimpy and sickly sweet. And now here was my stroke-stricken grandmother, whom I would not want to hurt or disappoint for the world, asking me if I loved Jesus. I could hardly get the words out, but thank God I said, "Yes, I love Jesus, Grandma."
"Oh, I'm so glad," she said.
Looking back on it, it seems strange. I considered myself a Christian, but I had trouble saying, "I love Jesus." I would die for Jesus, I thought, but don't ask me to say the words, "I love Jesus." What kind of Christian experience teaches people to think like that?
The simple fact was, I didn't love Jesus the way Jesus would yet teach me to love him. I loved him in a human, carnal sort of way -- my way. I loved him as an extension of me; he was my champion, my hero, my king. But he was not yet my friend. I knew a lot about him. But I didn't yet know him.
"What I am saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. He is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, 'Abba, Father.' So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir" (Galatians 4:1-7).
I had been a slave in the household of God. Not because I had to be a slave, but because I didn't yet realize what it meant that God had made me his child. I lived like a slave because that was all I knew. I followed the rules I thought were the Master's rules because I honored the Master and because I wanted to avoid the lash and receive the benefits.
It was a better life than people outside the household had to live. It kept me out of a lot of trouble. But at best it was only a shell of the true life God yearned for me to have. God wanted a son, not a slave. God wanted a relationship of love, not a relationship of rules. God wanted my heart and soul, not just my compliance.
Belonging to the "one and only" is heady stuff. You are special. You know things nobody else knows. You do things the deceived masses do not do, and you avoid things the deceived masses embrace. Your human leader is the most important person on earth. Because of your special status, you will be delivered from the disasters that are coming on the world. All the people that oppose you now will one day acknowledge that you were right all along and praise you for your loyalty and integrity, that is, if they finally join the "one and only" and escape annihilation. But the light of God's love was about to break into the darkness of my "loyalty and integrity."
Taken from The Liberation of the Worldwide Church of God by J. Michael Feazell. © 2001 Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.
-- J. Michael Feazell