Favorite Mistake part 4

          Word of mouth was decent for Live Like Jesus class.  The students of year one encouraged other students to join it the following year.  Do to some scheduling complications the class was actually cancelled. It didn’t start again until 2012.  It had become a mythical legend.  During the 2 year hiatus I sought God’s face on how to fix it.  I felt He had directed my path in gathering the checkpoints but I knew I was still doing it wrong.  In my personal life I pleaded for intimacy with Him.

          I made a few tweaks that aren’t even that describable and the class exploded.  I don’t mean grew in numbers, I mean the students just grew!  Teachers and coaches were coming to me and asking me what I was doing with them.  I’d just smile gently and say, “Live Like Jesus class.”  We were a success.

          Except for the frequent failure, guilt, and shame associated with trying so hard, having great intentions, and only seeing results when…God was involved.

          That was the secret.  It should have been obvious all along.  The students and I experienced growth and “checkpoint” success when God moved in us.  That first semester we just so happened to have God meet us on a lot of checkpoint efforts.  Ask some of the students who stayed in the class second semester.  God stopped showing up.  We were picking the wrong ones or somethingJ

          That summer God reached out to me and broke me completely.  But His grace and mercy He opened my eyes to how He actually works and what my part is in it, and it was liberating.  I started changing a lot.  I changed how I approached things, how I prayed, how I read, how I taught…how I taught.

          Entering the 2012-2013 school year I had a real problem.  I taught a class that was waaaaaaay more legalistic than me.  I taught a class that was not freedom, but the opposite.  What to do with Live Like Jesus?  Ugh, I even hated the name now.  God had shown me that obedience falls within our freedoms not our slavery.  But how to I apply that to class?  You still have to come every day, you still must be assessed.  Hmmm.

          So I started the first semester with tiny tweaks.  Pouring as much grace on people as possible and using phrases like, “Don’t just pick a checkpoint, but be led to one.”  I desperately wanted to be a part of what God was doing and had zero interest in busy work Christianity. 

          It was hit and miss.  Then some circumstances came together like a perfect storm to turn Live Like Jesus class into a book.  A published book for the world!  Yikes, it wasn’t ready.  In October 2012 I started writing it.  The first draft had heavy hints of legalism, and some residual lordship salvation from my past.  I prayed and prayed and I revised and revised and I searched the scriptures in the wee hours of the morning for the axiom’s.

          I was walking one night and talking out loud to Jesus and it hit me.  Terminology and ways to communicate what I was learning. All of those checkpoints are really opportunities.  In no way could we ever do them all.  In no way could we ever consistently guess which one God is going to be a part of.  But if we had an awareness of the opportunities then we might noticed more readily when God is moving and cooperate with Him. 

          I re-wrote the book.  I came to class with a grin and said, “class there are no more checkpoints, there are only opportunities.”  I will admit at first it was just a change of terminology and not in method.  But by second semester we had made some monumental changes.  The first one was a whole new list of opportunities that were added based on Jesus’s heart and attitude.  These became my personal favorites.

          Now the class selects a group of 5-6 opportunities to be thinking of for the week.  We call it our pool, and we swim in that pool for a week.  A week later we read the list and ask anyone if they freely entered into Jesus life in any of those ways.  Sometimes we do some together as a group when God provides a group opportunity.  We still share victories and failures but the guess work is gone and the busy work is gone.  There are no more self-assignments instead we react to Jesus in us.  The intimacy that I had longed for is available!  I think we miss what Jesus is doing when we are too busy being good Christians.

          So goes the book, it evolved into Opportunity Jesus. We claim Romans 8:29 as our heartbeat.  For those He foreknew (all Christians) He also predestined (meaning it’s going to happen) to be conformed into the image of His Son (yes that’s what we were trying to do and God is already doing it!)  Jesus paid it all and made us new.  As new creations God is working on our on fire days, sure, and even on our ice cold days.  Now where the opportunities come in is this…each one that shows up in your life gives you the choice to cooperate with what God is already doing in you.  That is where freedom meets obedience and that is where maturity/growth meets trust. 

That’s our story…will this be your story too?