Be True
Jameela’s secret was out. Her mother had found her Bible and some Christian literature. Her male relatives met to discuss her fate. They decided to be generous in their options. If she would renounce following Jesus and marry her cousin by year’s end, everyone would forget this momentary lapse in good judgment. If she insisted in pursuing this new belief, she would become as the dead. She would not be able to live with any of her family members. Her existence would not be acknowledged by any of them. They would expunge her from the collective family memory.
Jameela knew that, harsh as this was, it could be worse. Some met with fatal accidents after defiling the family honour. Though it was not a difficult decision to make, it was a hard path to follow. Staying in town was not an option, but travelling alone would be next to impossible. She would have to depend on the few other followers of Jesus she knew to help her survive in the short term and build a new life somewhere else. At the same time, as she was staying true to Jesus, Jameela feared giving away those she needed to help her.
I met Jameela in North Africa, after she had moved to a new place and begun her new life as a quiet witness of Jesus among her own people. Her personal integrity and devotion to the Lord serves as a challenge to many who meet her.
However much Jameela’s commitment to live for God may stir us, Jesus provides the perfect example of one being true to God. In John 17:4, He prayed, “I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.” When choosing between God’s will and any other competing interest, He chose to focus His attention on whatever it was that God was focussed on. What brings me up short here is “any other competing interest.” I recognize other interests which, while legitimate enough, are not part of what God intends for me.
In the early verses of Matthew 4, we see Jesus’ response to Satan’s temptations. In every case, when having to choose between God’s purposes and something which would appeal to His human impulses for things ranging from comfort to power, He inclined His heart toward God. When temptations to make life easy and your influence great come along, what do you choose?
Jesus identified Himself so strongly with God, the heavenly Father, that He could say in John 14:7 “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.” This was true for Him because He perfectly shared His Father’s essence, but as believers, we are to be filled with His Spirit which allows us to reflect Him, albeit imperfectly to those around us. How much of God can others see when they look at us?
Those who want to be like Jesus need to be ready for those times when we will face the same choices He did. Just as He did with His one and only Son, God will put us into situations where we will have to choose between His way and evil, between His way and social expectations, between His way and our way and so on. One last word of caution based on personal experience: Beware of trying to rationalize your rebellion - claiming that your way is really God's way.
