Randy Frazee - Think, Act, Be Like Jesus: Becoming a New Person in Christ

ZONDERVAN

Think, Act, Be Like Jesus

Copyright 2014 by Randy Frazee

ePub Edition November 2014: ISBN 978-0-310-51443-5

Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Frazee, Randy.

Think, act, be like Jesus : becoming a new person in Christ / Randy Frazee, with Robert Noland.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-310-25017-3 (softcover)

1. Christian life. 2. Spiritual lifeChristianity. 3. Theology, Doctrinal. I. Title.

BV4501.3.F73557 2015

248.4 dc23

2014025607

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Cover design: Extra Credit Projects

Interior design: Beth Shagene

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 /DCI/ 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Jennifer, David, Stephen, and Austin the four children God gave us to raise up in Christ. You were the motivation for the content of this book. We are so very proud of who you are becoming more and more like Jesus every day!

Contents

INTRODUCTION The Confession of Unbelief

BELIEF 10 Eternity

PRACTICE 10 Sharing My Faith

VIRTUE 10 Humility

Becoming a New Person in Christ

I have amazing memories of my mom. She came from a very poor family in southwestern Pennsylvania and married my father at eighteen years old. When I was three, they moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where my dad secured a job with Caterpillar, assembling forklifts.

Throughout my childhood, my mother loved and sacrificed so much for my three siblings and me. She spent all of her money, time, and energy on us. I recall that she rarely did anything for herself. So, several years ago, when I was at a place in my life where I had some financial margin, I called my mother to tell her I was taking her and my dad on an all-expense-paid trip with our family to the magnificent Niagara Falls on the day after Christmas. I reserved rooms in a turn-of-the-century, opulent hotel on the Canadian side, facing the waterfalls. She was going to be so embarrassed and uncomfortable, believing she didnt belong in a place like this but I wanted her to have an unforgettable experience.

When I called Mom a few months before the trip date, she told me she wasnt feeling well. Initially, I thought she was just trying to wiggle out of the trip. As the next few months unfolded, though, her illness grew worse, and I really began to worry. I decided to fly to my parents home a few days earlier than we had been scheduled to arrive there and only a week before our big vacation.

Three days later, my mother died of advanced pancreatic cancer at the age of sixty-two. The trip was canceled only seventy-two hours before we were to leave. I was finally in a position to do something for my mother, and I missed it forever by three days. Three days! I was devastated in so many ways. Something changed within me maybe more of an awakening of what had been there all along. My soul was in crisis. I slipped into a place of despair.

The thing I miss most about being with my mom is laying my head between her head and shoulders. It was the safest, sweetest place on earth. The last two days of my moms life, when no one else was in the room, I crawled into the bed with her and placed my head in that warm spot of intense love. Tears rolled down my face. I thought I would have had more time. I was trying to soak in a lifetime in only a few fleeting hours.

Be Like Jesus VIRTUES

Looking back, I now realize the amazing sense of Gods timing. In this season surrounding my mothers illness and death, three spiritual giants were mentoring me. Each was individually schooling me on the very work now coming to fruition fifteen years later in this book and in the Believe Bible engagement experience. But before these resources could go out to help others, God had decided to do some work in me first. The biblical word is pruning the process in which God wants to work through us, but first must work on us. A deeper work takes place in the individual for the greater work to go out to the world much like a gardener prunes the trees to gain the best harvest (see John 15:2).

My three spiritual mentors were J. I. Packer,

Here is what my mentors taught me: The Christian life is not primarily an intellectual pursuit; nor is it simply about doing good or engaging in spiritual activity. The Christian life is about who you are becoming for the sake of others. Since Jesus came from heaven to represent us, he also modeled for us the life we were created to live.

Therefore, the ultimate objective of life by Gods design is for us to be like Jesus.

Gods passion is for the virtues of Jesus to appear in our lives. The Bible calls these virtues fruit. Fruit is external to a tree. It is seen by all and available to taste by all. When delicious fruit appears on the end of our branches, it gives evidence of the health inside. But, ultimately, the value of fruit is for the benefit of others, who grab hold of the fruit of our lives and taste it. Is it ripe, sweet, and delicious, or is it green and rotten, or possibly even artificial?

Paul called these virtues the fruit of the Spirit. The grape was likely the first fruit to come to the mind of the early Christian, who might have harkened back to the teaching of Jesus about the vine and the branches.

Recently, I watched Somm, a documentary about a group of men trying to attain the level of Master Sommelier the highest level an expert in wines can achieve. Five wines were placed in front of the aspiring contestants. They would swirl the glass, immerse their noses completely inside, and take a deep breath. Then they would take a sip, swish the wine in their mouths, and spit it out in a bucket. From this exercise, they were able to declare the region, variety, date, body, and tannins of the wine. I found the description of the flavor to be fascinating. The word most often used was hint. A candidate would say, for example, This wine has a hint of cinnamon, a hint of oak, a hint of licorice, a hint of blueberry, and a hint of earth.