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Spiritual DNA: What are you living for?

Spiritual DNA
Several weeks ago I wrote a blog asking “What would you die for?” Another way of putting the question is, “What are you living for?” What do you actually believe so strongly that it’s at your core? Or as Gary Witherall put it, “Is what you’re living for worth dying for?” Gary Witherall is a…
By Seth Barnes
bloodSeveral weeks ago I wrote a blog asking “What would you die for?” Another way of putting the question is, “What are you living for?”
What do you actually believe so strongly that it’s at your core? Or as Gary Witherall put it, “Is what you’re living for worth dying for?”
Gary Witherall is a man who had to answer the question.  His wife, Bonnie, was martyred in Lebanon in 2002, an experience he writes about in the book, Total Abandon.
So, how would you answer the question? What do you really stand for? If they cut you, what would bleed?
Here’s my answer. I’m convinced that Jesus is God’s answer to man’s problem and that his mission on earth was to set men free, free to know him and free from the claustrophobia of a self-focused life.
I believe that most Christians think that salvation is 90% of the Christian experience and need help in moving beyond the ante-room of saying a “prayer of salvation” to the abundant life beyond. Some people call this helping hand discipleship. Discipling a person really comes down to giving a new believer your life to imitate.
Most Christians are aware of the difference between the law-based Old Testament and the grace-based New Testament, but they live lives that are more characterized by judgment than grace. When you really start to live in a committed community that radiates this grace, you get the Aha! experience that says, “Wow, this is why Jesus called his gospel ‘good news!'”
And I’ve seen people then realize that it’s a gospel that has vast power to transform a world that languishes in darkness, a world so enmeshed in pain that anything that arouses hope seems like a drink of cold water. I’ve seen many commit themselves as I’ve committed myself, to a life of bringing this hope to broken-hearted people.

 

I’m committed to just a few things that are key to the expansive life of the spirit that Jesus inaugurated. It’s the spiritual DNA that I bleed. How about you? When you’re cut, what do you bleed?
Here’s what it looks like in Haiti when we put the DNA into action.

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