This is Not Just a Guitar

My wife has had something on her heart for a little while now. She would like to learn to play the guitar. She told a few friends about this wish.

But we don’t own a guitar. Further, money is tight in our house. She decided against buying one. One day last week, she included a humble item in her prayers:

“God, I don’t see that we should buy a guitar just now. If you want me to play one, show me a way.”

I was home from work the very next day at lunchtime, when my wife answered a knock at the door. It was a friend stopping by unexpectedly. The friend had a spare guitar. She had come to give it to my wife—knowing nothing about the decision or the prayer the previous day. It’s all true.

My wife held back most of her tears until the friend was gone. Our friend might have been uncomfortable—too many tears just for this! But the gift was something more than only a guitar. It was another reminder of who God is, because we desperately need to be reminded.

For any of us, the reason why we look to Christ is to find God—the real God. Jesus was a man because God is personal. We forget this. The knowledge is too precious to hold. We look away.

The sophisticated world offers a picture of God that is easier. God is vast, but nothing more. God is indefinable. The word “God” is thus an icon for an abstraction—as bloodless as an infinity sign.

The cross shows something different from this—and someone dearer. In Jesus, we do not just see the God who created, producing the world long ago and far away. Instead, in Jesus, we see the God who creates, the God who is close. Nothing exists except that God made it (John 1:3), and that includes every new and present moment still breathing to life around us. God is still unfolding a plan—a personal plan. In Jesus, we see God as not only vast and indefinable, but also knowable and even small. Here is the God willing to become the size and scope of a man. Here is the beating heart of truth that lies well beyond the infinity sign.

In Jesus, God put on human finiteness. He put on the dependence and lack that we know so well. He found us and showed us his face. He struggled as we do, suffered as we can, and died as a brutally tortured human being would die. Then, he kept going—because God is not contained in a tomb.

“I am with you always,” he said, at the end of his worldly mission and the end of Matthew’s gospel (28:20). Always. Meaning: I am with you, even though they take my physical body away. I am with you, even when they take your physical body away. He is with us—in person. This is who God is.

God is not Santa Claus. My wife and I love the guitar, but we hope we will be just as true to Christ whether he gives us material gifts or not.

Rather, God is revealed in Jesus Christ—this is the important point. This is the point about God that is just as important today, just as vital, as it was when Jesus wore sandals on his feet.

The guitar is not just a guitar. It was God speaking to my family as a person can speak. God, the infinite Father, is also the knowable Son. He love fits our hearts, and his life unfolds within our lives and houses.

The one who constantly creates is still creating, still surprising us, still walking and working alongside us the way a person would. He is with us. This is God. And just like a person, sometimes he reaches out to us. Just like a person, sometimes he responds.

Am I Really That Different?

I don’t know if people see Jesus when they look at me. On many days, I’m pretty sure they don’t.

We are being remade. We are to believe in this. I just got done with a thought exercise of trying to honestly identify what changes I have seen in my life and in my nature that might be attributed to the Holy Spirit, the one who performs this remaking. I cataloged a brief list of the changes. Yet as I looked at the meager inventory and considered sharing it with others, I worried that I was insulting my Savior with faint praise. What if, actually, I am not really that much changed at all?

Some writers have seen similar shortcomings in the body of Christ overall. Os Guiness wrote in The Call about an Australian business leader sharing his faith with a Japanese CEO. The response from the CEO was dismissive: “Whenever I meet a Buddhist leader, I meet a holy man in touch with another world. Whenever I meet a Christian leader, I meet a manager at home only in this world like I am.”

Francis Chan writes in a similar vein in Forgotten God. “What disturbs me most is when we’re not really bothered that God living in us has not made much of a noticeable difference,” he says. “Most churchgoers are content to find a bit of peace rather than a ‘peace of God, which surpasses all understanding’ (Philippians 4:7). We want just enough peace to survive the week (or perhaps even the day).”

One more Christian author, Oswald Chambers, is unflinching in seeing a possible meaning of this. “That is not salvation, that is conversion,” he says. “I do not think it is too sweeping to say that the majority of nominal Christians are of this order; their eyes are opened, but they have received nothing.”

I wish to take nothing away from the challenge of what Mr. Chambers is saying. But I also note this verse, 2 Corinthians 3:18:

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image ... just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

We are, in the end, being transformed into the image of Jesus—into precisely the person Jesus would be if he were you or me. That being the case, we shouldn’t compare ourselves to other people. We shouldn’t compare ourselves to other people’s expectations. The only comparison we should make is between our own self and Jesus Christ. Of course we will fall short in this comparison (Romans 3:23), but when this is the only comparison we make, then there is no condemnation (Romans 8:1).

As believers in Christ, each of us has a common calling that is also unique. We are to love other people. We are to share the gospel message. That means we are to remain connected to other people—invested in them. This makes the nature of the calling unique to every individual, because each of us is unique not just in how we are gifted, but also in whom we will meet.

Recall that Jesus came to earth for the benefit of human beings. Recall that he put on human flesh, lived within the world’s ways, and spoke in the world’s languages. His mission required this. Our mission is nearly the same as his.

Seeking to measure the extent to which we are externally and visibly transformed is legitimate—we have been told that we will be changed. But we are being changed from inside, by a Spirit who dwells within. Seeking entirely after visible change might therefore miss the point—because we are not to be changed for change’s sake. Rather, we who believe in Christ are to remain with other people, and to remain accessible enough to serve them.

Jesus laughed, wept, got tired, got angry, and expressed exasperation. He was one of us. This should be a comfort as we seek to be one with him.

The outward change we are seeking is not the whole story, and it’s also not the end of the story. How great is the change that is building, the change whose power will be revealed? How extensive is the change within you, the change that you do not (yet) see?