Sharing the Journey
With An Older Brother

We spent the weekend with John and Mary Beaumont, two native Kiwi’s who have traveled the world encouraging brothers and sisters to live deeply in the life of Christ and are now settling down back at home in their senior years. It has been an amazing time sharing lessons from the journey and celebrating the wonderful things that God has done in our lives. John saw through the illusion of religious systems a long time ago and has helped others learn to thrive in God’s life without the baggage of religion.

John recently put his life story in print in a book called, A God-Filled Nobody. He is nuts about all of us learning to live freely and fully in the life of Jesus. Let me summarize some of our discussions together. It was filled with rich conversation sometimes exploding in gut-busting laughter and at others in awe of God—his work and his wisdom. I appreciate so much the life and testimony of this older brother and sister and the warmth with which they shared his lives and home with us. Here are some gleanings:

Live each day to the fullest. There will never be a day when God will love you more. There will never be a day when more grace is available to you. Too many people waste time pining away for a future that never comes or envisioning a future revival instead of living deeply in God each day they are alive. Religion has to keep you hoping for a better day, but knowing God lets you live every day in the adventure of following him.

Quoting a cricket commentator he heard some time ago, “Some people drink deeply of the water of life. Others just gargle. “ Let’s be drinkers.

It could be argued that those who file into buildings on Sunday morning and only meet, live and fellowship with a select group of God’s people are the ones who violate the spirit of in Hebrews’ admonition to “forsake not the assembling of ourselves together.” This Scripture is not about going to meetings, but living in the reality of the oneness of Christ’s body. We’ve got to see the body as including all of God’s children, not just those who believe or act the same way we do.

We have a mistaken notion of how the Christian life begins. It doesn’t begin when we say a sinner’s prayer, but when we give our lives to him and begin the marvelous journey of learning to trust him instead of ourselves.

And the reason the world is often not interested in knowing Christ, is because they see all the baggage we carry with it. When we tell them they just need Christ, they look behind at all the other baggage we’re holding. They know we will soon load them up with things like church attendance, religious activities, tithing and good works and they are not interested. We think they’ve rejected him, when in fact they’ve only seen through our baggage. If we don’t live in Christ alone we’ll never know if people really are seeing him or all the other baggage we carry. We only need to invite them to him, and let him lead them into the fullness of his life. I’m convinced that will be with a lot less baggage than most believers carry today.

We need young people to get to know God as a consuming fire that captures the whole of their being and instills in them a passion for him that takes them far beyond anything we’ve ever seen or done. That’s what had taken our hearts at a young age. God wanted to make himself known to every one with such a burning reality that everything else in our lives takes a back seat to him and his reality.

Quoting something John had read years ago in one of Charles Spurgeon's writings from the 1800s, he said for some people to talk in public is so intimidating that it is a huge cross for them. There are others for whom being silent is a huge cross for them to bear. Both should take up their cross!