When Rick Burgess stood on the stage of First Baptist Church, Montgomery, during the annual meeting of the Alabama Baptist State Convention Nov. 18, he included in his story an account of wayward living. It contained many of the sins the mind conjures up when one thinks about living for Satan.
Earlier that evening, Kevin Derryberry, the featured musician, told a similar story about his life.
Both men had been reared in Christian homes. Both made professions of faith in Jesus Christ at an early age, but both followed the path of the prodigal son described in Luke 15. It was Burgess who noted the similarity of their testimonies and concluded their lives prove one thing — “Satan loses.”
Neither man was there to tell of disobedient living. Burgess is a radio celebrity and an active member of Shades Mountain Baptist Church, Vestavia Hills. Derryberry is a well-known Christian artist who serves at Westwood Baptist Church, Alabaster.
And both powerfully communicated the gospel. For those who heard them, the two were living proof that God can change lives and change them dramatically.
But are such testimonies anymore powerful than the testimony of one who has walked obediently before God all of his or her life? Which can offer better direction for living? And which testimony is more pleasing to God?
As a youth, I remember wondering if I were doing the right thing being known as a Christian. It seemed the people our youth group went to hear all told of living on the wild side during their younger years before being saved. The books recommended for us to read included stories about how God reached into a wayward life and set that person’s feet on the straight and narrow.
Perhaps, I reasoned, to have a testimony to which people would listen, I needed to live a different type of life.
Perhaps I needed to experience the fullness of notorious sin in order to tell people how God can save one from it.
Maybe I would be a more powerful preacher and have more open doors with such a testimony, I thought.
While I did not follow that path, I did fall far short of the truly obedient Christian life. But I was still known as the young preacher of my high school.
Such thoughts may seem foolish to most readers, but they reflect the tensions of at least one teenager conflicted about the life advocated by Christian teachers and the lives held up as examples from the stages of Christian events.
Recently a Christian who has walked with God since childhood related a conversation in which this person was told that because this individual did not rebel against God as a youth, the person was unable to understand what life was like as an adult.
I was reminded of the time a psychologist prescribed wayward living to a Christian college student who was wrestling with his personal values and what he saw lived out around him at his university. It was as if emotional stability and self-understanding were tied up in wayward living.
In both cases, the words were the words of Satan, not of God.
Burgess made that critical point. He asked, “Have you ever been blessed for being disobedient to God?” Obviously the answer is no. God blesses obedience, not disobedience. God sought obedience from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In Exodus 20:6, God promises to show mercy to those who “keep my commandments.” The psalmist calls those “blessed” who seek after God with the whole heart.
Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). In 1 John 5:2, the apostle teaches that true “children of God” keep His commandments.
God’s heart is made glad by purity, not filthy living. God values obedience, not unrighteousness. God models concern about others, not actions that turn others into objects for one’s own pleasure.
Those who stand in the spotlight and confess their waywardness stand there despite their past, not because of it.
One can only wonder what God could have done with such lives had they been surrendered to Him from the beginning.
Oftentimes those talking about their wayward living carry scars — some deep and debilitating — that go unseen by those who see the people only in the spotlight. Often they live in the midst of pain, their own as well as the pain they caused others.
The Bible teaches that the angels of God rejoice when one lost sheep returns to God’s fold. Certainly the church should join the rejoicing. At the same time, it is imperative that the church not follow the ways of the world and only go after that which appeals to itchy ears.
The dramatic, the shocking, the sensational may get man’s attention. But God’s attention is drawn more to the one who loves Him with heart and soul and mind and strength through faith in Jesus Christ. That kind of model should be honored, and that kind of model is not compatible with wayward living.
These words in no way diminish the powerful testimonies of dynamic Christians like Burgess and Derryberry.
Rather the words are meant to remind us as Christians that the message communicated to all is first and foremost a message of love for God expressed in living before Him in humble obedience.
That was how Christ lived, and that is how we are to live.
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