Knee-Lift Reactions?

We all know how it goes when a doc taps your kneecap and up flies the bottom half of your leg. Not a thought enters your head, no time lapses between the tap and the reaction, and it’s as if you have no say.  There’s no pondering, or negotiating, or waiting to see if your leg will react.  It’s immediate and absolute, and your input wasn't part of the equation.

My pastor Jeff Jackson recently sent out an email challenging us to watch a youtube video of Pastor David Platt interviewing a young missionary to Uganda named Katie Davis.  After almost 45 minutes of hearing awe-inspiring/downright crazy stories of a young, single girl having spent a lot of time and heartache in the bush of Uganda, he asked if she thought what she was doing (adopting 14 orphans and she’s younger than 25!!) was radical.  She said NO.  She said it is seen as abnormal, but it shouldn’t be.  Through a grin that was overflowing from the springs of her heart she said that it was a natural response to what God had done for her.  She said, “How could I not?”. 

Nowadays we see a girl like Katie Davis and place her in an elite group of Christians that God has called in an extreme way and equipped with a special power to accomplish the radical things He asks her to do.  What we should see is another run of the mill Christian taking God at His word.  What we should see is a God worth sacrificing everything for.  We should see the God who can now reach abandoned children, befriend widows and feed the hungry.  We should see a woman so serious about her God that the woman in the story is a mere afterthought.  I’m sure Katie Davis wants to be seen that way.  But instead, we glorify the girl and think, “I could never do that”.  But her response is, “In light of what God has done for me, how could I NOT?”.

Enter in uncomfortable part of the blog…

If our spiritual “nerve-endings” in our “knees” were working, there wouldn’t be any more orphans left in our counties to adopt.  There wouldn’t be widows without a strong sense of family and love and acceptance. The sick would be prayed for.  The hungry would be fed.  The needy would be clothed.  The people in our lives would know, without a doubt, that we love them more than we love ourselves, our time, and our possessions; and we would show them that on a regular and practical basis.  We would live on little so we could give much. We would over-love regardless of the cost.  We would do all of the simple things that Jesus modeled and we would do it immediately and absolutely.  Because how could we not??  In light of all He's done for us, how could we not?

I called this post “knee-lift reactions”.  Instead of a knee-jerk, it seems like we often lift our knees slowly and steadily, inch by inch when we feel good and ready (myself included!).  Orphans are loose cannons that might have negative effects on our children... and talk about adoption being expensive!!  Widows… who even thinks about widows??  I know I don’t!  The sick?  They have hospitals.  The hungry?  Food shelters.  The needy?  Goodwill.  The homeless?  They’ll use the money for beer.  Or better yet, they got themselves into their situation… if I help them I will just be re-enforcing their choices.   We have reasoned God out of the picture completely, and the scariest part is, we've done it without even knowing it.

But what if we just reacted out of an inability to do otherwise?  What if our own comfort, time, money, or lives were so far removed from the equation?  After all, it is the love of our own selves that keeps us from showing the love of God.  If we took ourselves out of the picture, and focused solely on God, all of our lives would look like Katie Davis' in some form.  I'm not saying we should all fly to Africa on a one-way ticket, but David Platt put it beautifully by saying that God demands a blank check from us the moment we decide to bare His name.  It's not being radical, it's being obedient.  It shouldn't be extreme, it should be normal.  The underlying foundation of her life is an involuntary response to the saving grace of Jesus.  It's pure and simple.  It's a knee-jerk reaction, not a knee-lift with a step here and a step there.  It's immediate and absolute.  And it's out of a heart that says, "It hardly seems like enough God, but here ya go".  May WE be those people who when tapped, we react.  May we throw our comfort and desires at His feet, and exchange them for depths of fulfillment we wouldn't even dream possible.