Dear Friends:

We return to the story of Eutychus.

On the Saturday night, when we gathered for the breaking of the bread, Paul, who was to leave next day, addressed the congregation and went on speaking until midnight. Now there were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were assembled, and a young man named Eutychus, who was sitting on the window-ledge, grew more and more drowsy as Paul went on talking, until, completely overcome by sleep, he fell from the third story to the ground, and was picked up dead. Paul went down, threw himself upon him, and clasped him in his arms. “Do not distress yourselves,” he said to them; “he is alive.” He then went upstairs, broke bread and ate, and after much conversation, which lasted until dawn, he departed. And they took the boy home, greatly relieved that he was alive (Acts 20:7-12, REB).

I was asked to deliver the sermon for my twentieth anniversary homecoming at the Christian high school that I attended. What could a lawyer say to these people that would be of spiritual value? I simply gave my personal testimony and urged people to open up to the possibilities of God in their everyday lives. The response overwhelmed me. One couple spoke to me with such obvious spiritual pain that it haunts me still. They had driven 1800 miles for the weekend from their home in another state. I sent them a note of encouragement the following week. Here is what they wrote in response:

We struggle daily. Our [professional] practice has consumed us. We are so exhausted that we collapse the day we go to church and don’t even feel sociable. We have no time for Bible studies even though there are requests. I feel like a dry well–like the clouds that blow over this dry part of our state only to keep going, leaving us parched and desolate. With that state of mind we went to alumni weekend and you can see why your sermon was meaningful.

We are suffering from shell shock after being here for 16 years. Our church school is closed and our membership all in terrible need of being infused with life. We are tired of playing “bazooka quote” in bible class and afraid of bringing anyone to church where they get blasted and discouraged.

Too many souls dry up like this and fade away in spiritual aridity, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We know that the first Christians lived their lives together and shared their material possessions with each other “as any had need” says Luke. They spent their days together going to the temple for worship and visiting each other’s homes for fellowship, meal-sharing and praising God “with glad and generous hearts” and their community grew exponentially (Acts 2:44-47).

The Letter to the Hebrews says that the assurance we have of our salvation and the forgiveness of our sins in Jesus Christ grants us access to a close and intimate relationship with a God who is faithful to us. This confidence, we are told, gives us the freedom to stir each other to love and good deeds and that’s why we meet together–to encourage each other. We need to do more of this as time grows short and the world deteriorates in stress (Heb. 10:19-25).

The purpose of our gathering together is to encourage each other. Eutychus came to life when he was embraced, and held close, prayed for, fed and engaged in conversation.

Am I taking license with this incident in Acts? Absolutely! I take this license from Paul in 2 Corinthians 5 when he says Christ, in love, died for us all and was raised so we could live fresh and free as new creations, without the need to build ourselves up by criticizing the frail humanity of others. Paul concludes:

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:18-20).

Encouragement and reconciliation are the stuff of hands-on religion, requiring engagement rather than passive listening.

There is always a danger that one of us, worn and weary with the struggles of living, will drift to the edge of the congregation, fall asleep and tumble out the window. The resulting injury can leave us in chronic spiritual pain, spiritually paralyze us or deaden our spirits. What we all need and want from our community is a brother or sister who will come to our aid, embrace us in our brokenness, bring us back to life in fellowship, share a meal with us, converse in encouragement and help us home in healing grace.

Why isn’t there more of such ministry? Because whatever our lip service, there are pitiful few of us who seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness to the exclusion of self  (Matt 6:33).  What does that “seeking first” require of us?

It requires our commitment of body, soul and spirit to the achievement of community in the bond of Christ. It requires us to unclench our spiritual fists and jaws and unfold our arms in mutual submission to the wisdom of Christ revealed in the Word. It demands that we converse in the mutual upbuilding of love and not talk at and past each other in spiritual “one-upmanship.” It means that we must sacrifice our competitive desire to score points to the greater goal of winning a brother or sister in love.

Seeking first the kingdom of God requires each of us to plant and root our lives in Christ alone while generously sharing the fruits of our growth in Christ with the others in our community. It makes us forgo every manufactured substitute for the life of the Spirit even though that means we yield to the Holy Spirit our control and the templates for the spiritual life that others prepare and urge upon us.

At the same time, our quest for the kingdom of God and his righteousness calls us to resist the temptation to shape our faith community in our own image and insists on transparent fidelity to the Word of God without reservation or condition. Grace, the applied righteousness of God, requires that we develop an alert mind and heart for the mercies of our heavenly Father who, Jesus says, “is kind to the ungrateful and evil” (Lk 6:33).

Hardest, but most important of all, community requires of us a trusting acceptance that Christ loves us and loves those who irritate us most with equal ardor so that our hearts become open and capacious for the lost and the damaged. God’s express intention is that repentance be obtained through kindness, forbearance and patience (Rom 2:4). Christ demonstrated this spirit when he prayed for a Judas who betrayed him, dined with sinners, washed feet that in a matter of hours would run away from him, reached out to a Peter who denied him, loved a James and John who misrepresented him, and forgave his murderers.

The Gospels have no record of him excluding anyone from his table of fellowship. His parables are consistent in stating that anyone who accepts his invitation gets to eat dinner at his house.

We are so impatient with the broken, the shameful, and the stubborn. It is tempting to tidy up the community by the euthanasia of legalistic condemnation. “Out of sight, out of mind,” the saying goes. But revival is a stirring to life, not a process of elimination. Sanctification is a fruit of the indwelling Holy Spirit, not an obstacle course for ascetics.

But we have a calling to patience expressed in the very autobiography of the Apostle Paul himself. “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners–of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life” (1 Tim 1:16-17).

In receiving “the utmost patience” from Christ, Paul found a rule for successful living in the fellowship of believers that he shared with the Colossians.

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him (Col 3:12-17).

Everything Paul describes is meant to contend with the threats and ravages of sin. There is brokenness, meanness, arrogance, pride and impatience at work in the world. So we clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, all found in the robe of righteousness that Christ places on us (Isa 61:10).

We have frictions and grievances, but we are called to forgiveness. We have differences and divisions, but we are asked to drape ourselves together in the silken folds of love. We have doubts and resentments, but we can submit our issues to the rule of the peace of Christ in our hearts which umpires all disputes in the body of Christ.

If selfishness is robbing us of joy, we can count our blessings in thankfulness. When we are famished, exhausted, angry and lonely, we can let the word of Christ fill us with the truth that we are loved. We can sharpen each other against complacency with the wisdom of the word applied to the realities of life together, and refocus on Christ in musical worship.

All of these things are done with Christ and for Christ. This is the positive Christian life that Paul is talking about lived out in relationship. It is the kind of engaged, growing life that draws  us together because we are looking only to Christ. It is neither simplistic nor unrealistic.

The proud and critical nay-sayers who rebuke us that a life like this will only end in disappointment are the real rebels against the reign of Christ. Any time we seek our own strength as a hedge against the uncertainties of love within our community we are expressing an odious mistrust of the Savior. God is love and we love because he first loved us. If we can’t accept and live in that truth, the Apostle John says, then we are proving we don’t know God (1 Jn 4:7).

The awful truth in that case is that we aren’t introducing anyone else to the real God either no matter how hard we’re trying. The compulsion of the law can tell us no more than our need for love, but only the love of Christ will bring us home (Rom 7-8).

I write this as a man blessed by a fellowship of encouragement and accountability that keeps me away from the window ledge. It begins each morning with prayer and study of the Word. As we reach the challenges of midday, the streams of personal devotion join in a flow of grace running through my home and my law offices. Colleagues and friends who know each other’s personal and professional challenges and weaknesses join in prayer and encouragement.

Within five minutes, if need be, a dozen or more of us can join in intercession, called by pager, cell phone and email. Sometimes we gather for prayer and worship, not because anyone tells us to do so, but because it is the pressing desire of our heart. The point is, as one of my colleagues says, “to walk through each day holding hands with Jesus.”

This is made more difficult for many of us because we work in faith-based settings where religious programming is de rigueur and spontaneous religious expression can be viewed with suspicion. What is it if it can’t be motivated, trained, reduced to policy, incentivized and assessed? This is a question that I’ve encountered more than once that rises out of pride of status and fear of the unknown. Nothing freezes the corporate heart quite like Jesus’ observation, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (Jn 3:8).

Love is irrepressible, however, and like flowing water it finds its own level. So we who know that we are loved find each other in the ways that the body of Christ has always grown–growing with a growth that comes from God alone (Col 2:19).

I recently gave the morning devotionals at a camp meeting. After one session, an attractive thirty-something woman approached me. “Where did you get what you talk about?”

“You mean God loving us and not quitting on us no matter what?”

“Yes.”

“Out of my experience,” I told her. “Years ago, God connected with me on an airline flight and the Word came alive for me and that Word was that God loved me. Nothing has been the same since.”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “I wandered far away from God. My life was going nowhere.

“The Holy Spirit impressed me to go to church one morning,” she continued. I didn’t want to go, but the Spirit kept pressing me. I sat through the class study and it was the same as I remembered it–so-so.

“I wanted to leave and was getting ready to go. Then an older woman sat down next to me. She talked to me kindly and even reached in her purse and showed me a picture of her son who had died in the Viet Nam War.  She took my hand in hers and held it. I kept thinking that I should go, but she held my hand clear through the service. I don’t remember a thing about the sermon that day. But when I left I knew that God loved me and I haven’t forgotten since.”

The older woman’s hand clasp revived the young woman to the vibrant glow of eternal life, just as Paul’s embrace brought Eutychus back to life in the little community of Ephesian believers. The kingdom of God is always and ever a “hands-on reality.”

Paul moved on after that night, but he sent the Ephesians a letter that ended with these words: “Peace be to the whole community, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all who have an undying love for our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 6:23-24).  We couldn’t have a better prayer for our community of faith.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him (Ps. 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.

Kent and his beloved Patricia are enjoying their 31st year of marriage. They are the proud parents of Andrew, a college student.