“I should really say something.”

You’ve just seen something that you know isn’t right. You try to ignore it and turn away. But your heart is burning within you. You want to speak up, but something restrains you: fear. Fear of embarrassment, fear of the reaction you may provoke, fear of misreading the situation. “Who am I to even say something?” The moments tick by. You see your opportunity to act starting to slip away. You try to mentally rehearse what you could say. Your heart is pounding as you work up the courage to confront the situation. You look around, wondering if anybody else knows what is going on. “Surely there’s somebody else more qualified than me to intervene here.” 

But there isn’t. Nobody else is aware, or if they are, they’re just as conflicted as you are. This is your moment to act and yours alone. Will you speak up? Or will you let the moment pass?

Fill in the blanks. You’ve been in this type of situation before—it could be that someone is gossiping about someone you know; it could be that you have learned information that will hurt someone you know, but they are unaware as of yet; it could be that someone is being bullied, or someone is getting ready to start a fight; it could be one of your friends pocketing something at the store; it could be a boy and a girl from church slipping away alone together at a party. Fill in the blanks. 

When we talk about how God works with us, the first thing that comes to mind is how we repent of and work to overcome sins and problems (my last article in the summer issue of Compass Check gave tips for how to do that: “How Do You Overcome Recurring Sins?”). 

Yet being a Christian does not mean that your sole focus is to stop sinning, but to allow God to gradually change you. The way this is stated in Scripture, however, can sound passive: “Yield to the Holy Spirit;” “submit to God’s will;” “let this mind be in you.” That passive tone can be puzzling—what does it look like to yield to God’s will? Does that mean I just sort of wait around for Him to do something?

It is these types of situations—when our hearts burn within us, when we feel a strong urge to act, to say, to do something—that help to break through the passive tone. What it looks like to “let this mind be in you” (Philippians 2:5) is to let go of your natural human mindset and learn the mindset of Jesus Christ. The more you do so, the more God can use you as a powerful tool in service of the good news of His Kingdom. 

And although it is when you choose to be baptized that God’s Spirit literally comes to live inside of you, know that until then, He is involved in your life and is revealing His will to you. Read on to learn how.

Slave to Sin, or Slave to Righteousness?

The presumption of Scripture is that we are doing works—bearing fruit. There is no neutral state of being. Paul put it this way: “Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living” (Romans 6:16, New Living Translation).

Paul puts it in such black-and-white terms because we can easily fool ourselves into thinking that the way we are living life is fine when it isn’t. We often live on a kind of auto-pilot, where we aren’t necessarily choosing sin, but we aren’t really choosing righteousness either. Sometimes we even subconsciously think we’re okay by comparing ourselves to some much worse standard (“I don’t sleep around/shoplift/blaspheme God/etc., so I’m not that bad.”) 

But the net result of living that way, in the long term, is sin if we don’t let Christ’s mind be in us. In one parable, Jesus illustrated how God gives us resources and hopes that we will use them for good (Matthew 25:14-30). The resources we are given take the form of natural abilities, knowledge, intelligence, money, physical health and more. In the parable, one servant didn’t use the resources he was given (represented by a “talent” of precious metal, worth about 20 years of wages), saying, “I was afraid and went out and hid your [money] in the ground.” The master’s response is chilling: “You wicked and lazy servant . . . cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness” (Matthew 25:25-30). Yikes.

Come to Me, All Who Are Weary

The good news is that our calling, to be Jesus’ disciple, comes with a beautiful promise: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). 

I had never understood this saying very well, because I never really understood or thought through the metaphor of a yoke. Allow me to explain it: a yoke is a strong wooden beam that a farmer places across the back of two oxen to link them together. He or she harnesses them both to the plow, and the yoke allows the two animals to pull together in unison, which amplifies their combined strength. But the farmer is always careful to match two oxen of relatively similar strength. If one is significantly stronger than the other, he will strain against the yoke while the weaker one strains to keep up—each ox’s strength is wasted and they become tired more quickly.

Jesus’ word picture has two built-in assumptions: First, that we are always walking forward (doing works, living life), and second, that we are under a yoke of some kind. The yoke of Jesus Christ is easy, lighter and less burdensome in implicit contrast to another yoke: the yoke of the sins of this world—the things that we turn away from when we choose to live God’s way of life. The works of the flesh: fornication, drunkenness, hatred, jealousy, selfish ambition, bitterness, etc. (Galatians 5:19-21). These are the yoke of the ruler of this world, Satan. He will gladly hook you up, and the more you strain to keep up with him, the sicker, the weaker, and the less fulfilled you will be.

By comparison, Jesus Christ says His burden, His yoke, His pace is easy. This does not mean He is espousing an unproductive or somehow lazy way of life (see above parable); rather, He is espousing a way of life focused on serving God and others out of genuine love. The result of living God’s way is a more fulfilling, joyful, productive life. Those who spend their time serving others are happier and more full of life than those focused on themselves.

How to discern God’s will

How do you train yourself to know what’s right and wrong, and to learn to hear God’s will? The answers are simple: study the Bible and pray to Him often. Basic, right? But as humans, sometimes we can let our communication channels with God become neglected. Then when we’re in a crisis, suddenly we’re praying to God and expecting to open the Bible and see something like “Choose to forgive Kathleen for that mean comment she made at lunch on Tuesday,” or whatever.

But it turns out that small, everyday decisions add up to huge, life-changing trends—we just can’t see how until later in life. By choosing to ask God for guidance every day in prayer and reading His Word, you are training your brain to think more like Him and to discern His will in your life. When those crisis moments come, responding in a way that reflects God’s will instead of your own will come more naturally.

The result is a peace of mind and a life of rich reward (John 10:10). It is helping others, focusing on their needs out of the abundance of your own love for them as children of God.