Jesus is recorded as saying in John 12:24…”Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
In my opinion, the biblical danger zone of faith…where God displaces our way with His own unique and innovative life-script containing all of the elements of a biblical narrative story of faith…has not been articulated well-enough in terms of its universal application to every Spirit-born Christian.
“There is more than a grain of truth in G. K. Chesterton’s observation that Christianity has not been ‘tried and found wanting’ but ‘found difficult and never tried’.”[1]
I believe this is one of the final pieces of the gospel message of the new covenant…that our worldly normative, conventional goals and aspirations must fall into the ground and die before we can bear much fruit…that this is a fundamental biblical truth…expressed throughout the biblical narrative stories of faith…which is still remaining to be fully recovered from the Protestant Reformation (Jer. 31:31-34).
This concept of falling into the ground and dying as a prerequisite to producing much fruit…as the God-invented pathway into a knowledge of good and evil…sanctified for all time by the death and resurrection of Christ…is not a negative…is not a route to be avoided at all costs…as the worldly conventional thinking of humanism would assert.
A God-composed journey of faith life-script rises above worldly conventional normalcy…not below.
It is the “new normal” of godly living which predates modern theology, scholarship, and philosophy by thousands of years…starting with Abraham. It is a concept that requires the participation of the one, true, living God…and at its outset at the beginning of human history… soars to the heights of moral reasoning.
The biblical narrative stories of faith produce a “father of faith,” a governor of Egypt, a deliverer of a nation in bondage, remarkable men and women judges ruling the land, a prophet from birth, a militarily mighty and poetic king, powerful prophets having varied callings and missions, ordinary fishermen who evangelized the world, and an apostle…Paul…to the Greco-Roman world in the first-century…who came from the most contrary background as is imaginable.
This incredibly innovative and unconventional concept to life of something falling into the ground and dying to produce much fruit…God’s ways displacing our ways…applies to being a parent, school teacher, local town mayor, policeman or policewoman, soldier, college president, college student, lawyer, architect, civil engineer, professional athlete, automobile mechanic, aerospace engineer, scientist, landscape groundskeeper, politician, church pastor, foreign missionary, social worker, and every other imaginable, lawful, and commendable endeavor.
A God-composed and managed journey of faith is the most exhilarating and fulfilling adventure possible in this life.
I believe this concept…of every Christian stepping into their adventure of faith life-script…will come into clearer focus…and become a universally understood and experienced reality in Christendom…as we approach the upcoming tumultuous events of the end-times.
[1] Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999): 149.
The Cross in the Christian Life 