Near the beginning of my year at School of Discipleship we went through the book “The Jesus Style” by Gayle Erwin. In this book he talked about the characteristics of Jesus, and one is that he was a man of no reputation. It stood out to me at the time, but since then we have gone through many others books and I had forgotten about it, until just recently.
In one of our classes the teacher challenged us to search our hearts to find out what is coming in between us and God. After meditating on this, I realized that though it may sometimes come in different forms, what really hinders my walk with God is my trying to protect my reputation. It causes me to fear obeying God and losing friends. But Jesus had no reputation.
In a way everyone has a reputation, but for Jesus it had no meaning because his reputation was simply who he was. He wasn’t ever trying to be someone he wasn’t, or show off to people; he had no worries of who was, or who wasn’t his friend; he had one mission and that is what his whole life was focused on.
For me it comes back to the thing I struggle with the most: Being real with people and not hiding who I really am. This was one thing I saw in myself a few months ago and it really hit me hard. I thought I had made changes and at least overcome this some what. Now I see that though I may have taken one step, there are still hundreds more to go. I can’t do it, I will only fail. Yet I am amazed with the grace of God, he stands by my side still loving me and telling me his grace is sufficient for me.
And I believe that “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.”
1 Thess. 5:24.
—School of Discipleship student
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