I am one of those people who gets Star Trek and Star Wars confused. Terry watched both and loved both, multiple times. I saw the Star Wars movies when I was little, but not since, so I do not remember everything relevant about them. I do, however, remember Yoda. Or, I guess I should say, remember Yoda, I do.
The significance of Yoda was fascinating to me. Luke Skywalker went to Yoda to gather wisdom and advice. He was a special little guru to Luke and he talked funny.
I have never really had a Yoda, so to speak, but as I get older, I realize how passionately I am pursuing a life led by the Holy Spirit, and I try to only listen to wisdom and advice from people who speak the truth. God’s truth; not the world’s truth. Those are two very different things. The world tells us, “you must do this in order to have that,” or “you have to say this and shake your finger,” where God tells us, “you have to love everyone.”
If I had a Yoda in my life, it would be Bob Goff. Reading both Love Does and Everybody Always truly changed my life. Bob manages to break down the complexities of life in a way to remind us we need to be Jesus in this world, rather than being ourselves. Bob reminds us we simply need to love people instead of correcting them all the time.
One morning as I was stirring my coffee, something triggered a memory of a guy who took tremendous advantage of us. I wanted to fire off a text or email to him and tell him how disappointed I was in him for lying to us and stealing from us, and how upset I was that he quotes scripture in one breath and calls his wife horrible names in the next. This is wrong, and I wanted to tell him so. Terry and I had really mixed feelings about this guy. On the one hand, we wanted to believe the best. But on the other hand, a sinking feeling in our guts made us suspect of this guy’s ability to tell the truth and his real intentions. I was way more on the “other” hand side.
As I sat down and opened up my Live in Grace Walk in Love by Bob Goff devotion book, the devotion for that specific day was “Don’t Be Right, Be Jesus.”
Ouch. Humbled was I, to say it like Yoda.
“For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” - 2 Corinthians 4:6-7 (NIV)
Too often, the political science and business law classes I took as a young college student will flood my mind with, “here is proof for why so and so is in the wrong, and justification for swinging back and pointing out their many wrong doings.” Now, please do not think I am saying we should not seek justice or expose our enemies when they are in the wrong. I wrote about this a while back, how my friend Jessica sent a sermon to me about “turn the other cheek” and “give them your cloak as well,” meaning Jesus was telling us we are to expose the wrong done to us by other people … but we are to love them, in the process.
What I am saying, however, is we do not need to live our lives as if we are on stage, debating. We are not tallying scores for our wit and quick comebacks. If we are living our lives for Jesus, we are tallying souls for the Kingdom.
I would much rather be known for tallying souls than tallying scores. If we are living for Jesus, our lives are like a compass, pointing others only in one direction: toward Him.