I have noticed an interesting shift in myself this month as we have turned our focus in chapel from Knowing our Christian Identity to now Growing in Christ-like Character. I don’t think I like the growing as much as the knowing. Perhaps it’s because the primary task in knowing our Christian identity is to uncover, claim and believe what God has said about who we already are but growing our Christ-like character requires the disciplined work of getting our behavior to line up with who we want to become. God it seems gives us our identity but we have to form our character and that requires a lot of intentional work.
When I was child I sucked my thumb. According to my mother my thumb entered my mouth just seconds after I came into the world. It was my first comfort, my earliest coping mechanism, and my go-to when times got tough. I cringe a bit at sharing this for I am sure some of the psychology professors here at the University will have a heyday with this information, but I sucked my thumb off and on until the sixth grade. Not in public of course and not even in just any old place in my house, but still after a long hard day in grade school I would come home, retreat to my room and suck my thumb. My mother tried endlessly to get me to stop but it was a very difficult habit for me to break and it was exacerbated by the fact that I couldn’t distance myself from my coping mechanism because it was attached to the end of my arm.
When I arrived in junior high school I knew it had to stop. Sleepovers and summer camp were coming and I was horrified by the thought that even if I could get to sleep without it that I would wake up with my thumb in my mouth and everyone gathered around me pointing at my bad habit. And so I began the disciplined work of weaning myself off of my thumb. I tried all sorts of tactics including hot sauce on the tip of my thumb, wearing a sock over my hand when I went to sleep and most of all never allowing myself even a moment of catharsis even at the end of the worst of my junior high days. In place of the thumb sucking I took up reading. In the beginning it wasn’t nearly as satisfying but it helped me wind down after a day at school and generally helped me get to sleep at night. As a side note I don’t know that it was beneficial to my studies to connect reading with sleeping, but it did help the weaning process. I don’t know exactly when the breakthrough came, but after a lot of self-denial and a whole lot of redirection I finally broke the habit.
Growing in Christ-like character or more simply said, behaving like Jesus requires a similar commitment to getting rid of our childish ways. The bad habits we have developed and the coping mechanisms that are within arms reach will have to be intentionally dealt with and the character traits we desire will have to be purposefully embraced if we hope to grow into who we want to become. For is Scripture it says:
No prolonged infancies among us, please. We'll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are aneasy mark for impostors. God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything. We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. He keeps us in step with each other. His very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God, robust in love.
And so I insist—and God backs me up on this—that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd. They've refused for so long to deal with God that they've lost touch not only with God but with reality itself. They can't think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion.
But that's no life for you. You learned Christ! My assumption is that you have paid careful attention to him, been well instructed in the truth precisely as we have it in Jesus. Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything—and I do mean everything—connected with that old way of life has to go. It's rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you.
This month in chapel as we talk about growing in Christ-like character I hope you will join us so that we might support one another in the difficult work of getting our behavior to line up with who we want to become. This morning we invite you to join us as we hear the word of God proclaimed by Rev. Jeremy Del Rio, activist, teacher, lawyer and a man of God who has entered into the discipline of growing in Christ-like character.
Let’s grow together.
P.S. When I was 30 years old I woke up one morning with my thumb in my mouth. I don’t know what that was about but I want to remind you that old habits die hard.
