It is rarely the sudden events that shorten life. It is, instead, the many small bad choices over a long period of time that slowly kill you. But the bad choices along the way also lower the quality of life that you do experience. Very few people die because of gunshots. Many people die from complications due to excess weight.
On the flip side of things, the first workout doesn’t do much to increase you overall health. But keep it up for a few months or years and your health will improve. The positive effects build up. The benefits will be there. The same with changing your eating habits; the benefits show up over time. The quality of the life you do live will improve.
John tells us that something happens in us when we become His child. When we become a Jesus-follower by trusting what He said about Himself, then we are changed. John explains this by telling us there is a seed of divine origin that gets planted in us. And when that seed is planted it changes us. The desire for sin diminishes. Over time the obedience goes up as the sinning goes down. We choose obedience more often than disobedience.
In statistics we would say that there is a correlation between the rise of obedience and the lowering of disobedience. And this correlation begins when we are born again. When His life indwells ours, sin gets worked out of the system. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time for God’s Word to be worked through our system. It takes repeated positive responses to the Holy Spirit’s prompting.
The LORD tends to work on the biggest sins up front and then work toward refining our character with a thousand small tweaks. And it is His plan that we need to follow. We will be prompted to work on things according to His restoration plan. And everyone’s plan is different. The LORD works on different people in different ways. We are not to be pointing our fingers at others instead of being obedient ourselves.
And for John, one of the most fundamental acts of obedience is loving our fellow believers. If we can’t do this, love those in the church, then we need take a long look in the mirror of His Word. Perhaps we aren’t following and being obedient. Maybe we haven’t been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His glorious light.
People around us see our life. If we aren’t doing what is right, they will notice it. If our words and our actions don’t match, then they conclude that our God is a defective God, or that our faith is not genuine. Either way, they are dissuaded from accepting Christ. But if they do match, our words and our actions, then the door is open. Their appetites become salted and they begin to thirst for what we have.
The Arnold Journey 