Realizing that it's been over a full decade for me now, let me share with you my thoughts on what the true Christian life really is...

First, you meet Jesus. In that single day, His command is that who you are - or were - becomes crushed, completely erased. You're a new creature and the old must be totally surrendered.

Then you spend a good deal of time - years usually - learning what is expected of you, and also what is promised to you. Hopefully your guide is the Bible, illuminated by His Holy Spirit as you dwell in His presence. As often however, your guide is merely a set of religious rules and regulations which you are now told to live up to. You are presented with a pretty self-explanatory list of "do's and don'ts," and others are always on hand to explain those which you don't really get right off. And so you try, with all of your being. And for awhile, you perhaps succeed.

Everybody's pleased with how you've changed, and probably you even become respectable after awhile. You might go on in the trappings of merely being a good Christian for quite some time, pleasing man and occasionally God too. You become a useful, faithful, productive member of a local group of likeminded folks. (Likeminded that is, primarily because they're telling you what to believe and how to behave.) Sadly for many, this is where the so-called Christian life peters into a routine. You eventually no longer need the Holy Spirit to keep you from public sin and scandal; being a good Christian simply becomes your habit.

But somewhere in all of this you know there's something going on that others don't necessarily see. Your "old man," your "sin nature" is always present. It's not as crushed or completely wiped out as perhaps your former personality and lifestyle might have been. You do the things you wish you wouldn't, and you don't do the things you wish you would. Only you are aware of how you daily fall short of the goal - the expectations even. Most of the time, only you are aware of how grossly you blow it - and how regularly!

Sometimes you confess your sin and ask for help, prayer, and even accountability. This is good. The different paths that present themselves at this juncture however, are - are you confessing and striving to obey so that you may walk more closely with God? or is it mainly that you've got an image to maintain now? Sometimes only the Holy Spirit remains to challenge you, and to force an examination of -  "What exactly is it..." that motivates you to live this good life you've worked so hard to create for yourself? And depending on how long it's been since you communed with Him, even this revelation may never be demanded of, nor given you. You've met the expectations, "you fit the bill" now, but you've most likely forgotten there was a purpose, and a promise, in the whole deal.

Again, many go with maintaining the routine, the image, while the heart itself and the relationship with God grow dimmer and dimmer, even as the outside life seems to grow brighter and brighter. The hoops have been jumped, the clock has been punched, the ladder has been climbed, and now you're a beautiful statue sitting faithfully on top of a church building somewhere. So to speak.

Either that or you do not confess your sin to God, receiving grace to go on in an ever humbling but also uplifting relationship, and you become ashamed of yourself. Without communion with God, you have only "the standard" compared to "your performance" to look at. Eventually you drop out of the whole scene. Knowing you cannot maintain the facade any longer before others or even yourself, you "fall away" as the Bible puts it, or "backslide" as the religious put it - when you don't make the cut, and leave their club.

Wherever you are, in or out of church, look around and what do you see? Probably 50% of all your Christian acquaintances are either statues...   or they are the crumbled ruins of the same.

 
But for the few - not the called but the chosen - relationship with God supercedes relationship with man. Unfailing love and divine grace are the reward of those who steal away. Who skip the Thursday night "fellowship" and the Sunday afternoon "social" - occasionally I mean - to be alone with your maker. To seek His fellowship above all others'. To behold Him in majesty. To perceive yourself as mere dust in His presence, but also to receive the revelation that you are dust with His very life imparted to you. That you are dust - not in the wind -  but in the whirlwind. An incomprehensible tornado driven by divine and ancient purpose. You are but a drop, but a drop in a raging and cleansing storm, my friend. You are an arrow, fashioned to destroy the gates of the enemy. You are a mirror for the only light that shineth in this present darkness.

You can read all of this on a parchment page, and you may even hear it from a pulpit occasionally, but you never really know it - until He's told you so, Himself.

The likely devastation caused by your life of sin can be turned for good. The trappings of religion that try to fashion you into someone else's image can be left behind. Knowing firstly His love and secondly His purposes being expressed through you, you may walk alone at times, but you'll walk tall. Humbly, but without shame that is.

You slowly realize that even though you weren't serving God then, there are some parts of your old self that "religion" may not sanction nor will it ever comprehend, but were actually created in you by God for a purpose! From before the foundations of the world, and even knit together in your mother's womb by His hand, you're not totally as bad as you might've though you were. And especially as "they" may have led you to believe. What was crushed, what was surrendered on that alter so long ago, is sanctified, and resurrected. Warts and all, you are unique, and there's a divine reason behind why you are the way you are. God created YOU to be like no other. To do what no one else can. Or will, if you don't. His desires have become your desires; His will your pleasure; His wish your command. His delight your only motivation.

You crave nothing in this life, except only to lay hold... of what Christ Jesus... laid hold of you for. You know there are good works predestined for you alone to walk in, and what 's more - you've become ruined for anything less. You long not for the applause and approval of your peers, but for that still, small voice to one day boom, "Well done."

You have your marching orders, and you're gone. You run the race. You may not fellowship with those you first did, and then again you may. But you really only fellowship with those who are running as well. And you know them - more often than not - on sight. They're pretty weird, for starters. They're outside the box, by virtue of the fact that they're outside the walls. That's probably where you met them in fact. You recognize their scars, because you've been through the same battles. They almost never look like you either ... but they have your Father's eyes.