SCM Publishing is a member of the Foundation for Christian Media, a charitable foundation that promotes the distribution of Christian books, magazines, films and music.
ISBN 978-3-417-22854-0 (E-book)
ISBN 978-3-417-26788-4 (Available edition)
Data conversion e-book: Beate Simson, Pfaffenhofen on the Roth
This title was released earlier with the ISBN 978-3-417-20734-7.
Originally published in German under the title: Unfertig
by SCM R.Brockhaus im SCM-Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Witten
© 2016 by Andreas Boppart
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT), copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Additional translations:
Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NET) are from the NET Bible®, copyright © 1996–2016 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C., http://netbible.com – All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked (CEV) are from the Contemporary English Version
Copyright © 1991, 1992, 1995 by American Bible Society, Used by Permission.
Scripture quotations marked (NLV) are from the New Life Version.
© Christian Literature International
Christian Literature International (CLI) is a non-profit ministry dedicated to publishing and providing the Word of God in a form that can be read and understood by new readers and the well-educated alike … and at an affordable price. We invite you to learn how the NEW LIFE Version unlocks the treasures of God’s Word!
© 2016 SCM-Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, 58452 Witten
Internet: www.scm-brockhaus.de; e-mail: info@scm-verlag.de
Cover Design: Deborah Villamar
Typesetting: Debora Balmer
Translation and Editing: Tracy Christman-Konig, Joel Wilson
Proof-Reading: Judith Neibling
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MY ETHIOPIA EXPERIENCE
THE NATHANAEL QUESTION
FEELING TROUBLED
A PARTIAL FAITH
MY IMAGE OF GOD
THE SECRET
THE DIRECTION
THE YES
THE RELATIONSHIP
THE ESTIMATE
CHEAP GRACE
THE REWARD
THE TWO-LEGGED GOSPEL
THE DEVELOPMENT GRID
THE MOTOR
THE HERO’S DILEMMA
THE REBEL HEART
THE MOMENT THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING
BLINDED BY PIETY
FLIGHT ATTENDANTS
GETTING REAL
THE OLD BOPPI / NEW BOPPI PRINCIPLE
THE PIT BULL VS. THE EAGLE
THE TIME FACTOR
STAYING ENGAGED
THE “BY-YOUR-SIDE” GOD
EXCUSES
WILLINGNESS
COMMITMENT
COURAGEOUS OBEDIENCE
SENDING
THE VISION TREE
THE FINISHER
NOTES
ANDREAS “BOPPI” BOPPART is an international speaker, author and the national director of Campus für Christus Switzerland, a part of Campus Crusade for Christ International. He is a champion of authentic faith and invites others to live in the same way. He and his wife, Tamara, have four daughters. They live in the Graubünden region of southeastern Switzerland. He dreams big, thinks out loud and loves moving between the stark contrasts of changing the world and changing diapers.
I’m just a normal guy. I’m not great at doing more than one thing at a time. I’ll probably forget your name three seconds after you tell it to me. I have no idea what kind of car my neighbor drives or what color it is. I don’t always react in an extremely loving way when one of my four little girls decides to experiment with waking up at 2 a.m. I can’t put together a decent outfit, so I usually just put on whichever t-shirt is on top of the pile.
I get mildly aggressive when I’m hungry, so no one can stand to be around me. I’ve lived for more than three-and-a-half decades with a lopsided face that greets me with a sleepy-eyed stare in the mirror every morning. I can easily forget what I wanted to do or get in the short distance from the table back to the kitchen. It takes me at least twice as long to wash the dishes as my wife Tamara. I have the unique ability to overlook every type of underlying interpersonal conflict.
I regularly forget to take out the garbage. I’m not a great role model for eating my vegetables and other healthy stuff. I tend to be a bit gung-ho when it comes to ball games. Even when I brush my teeth before bed, I still have bad breath (my wife says). I have to let my four daughters tell me which clothes belong to which girl. I can sing loudly, but not very well. All of these things (and there are many others) give you an idea of my own personal “Hall of Fame” of incompleteness.
(I made the mistake of asking my wife and best friends if they had anything to add, and sure enough, they came up with quite a few things, much to their amusement!) I’m normal, not despite these things, but because of them.
And you’re normal too. You don’t always get it right. You’ve got a few quirks that you could do without, according to the people around you. You’ve got some hard edges and sharp corners. But you are a regular person. It’s these things that make you normal. The fact that you don’t get everything right all the time has to do with the fact that you’re unfinished.
If being a work in progress bothers you, because you don’t live up to your own standards or the expectations of others and you are confronted with your failures time and again, relax! You’re okay. God can deal with the fact that you’re unfinished.
This book is meant to help you get rid of all those “I’m not a good enough follower of Jesus” excuses. On the one hand, I hope that reading this book will free you, but it should shake things up and motivate you at the same time.
If you’ve been wired with a lot of natural self-confidence, at times you might find yourself thinking, “Wow, God really lucked out when He got me!” I thought that for a long time. Of course, I wouldn’t have used quite those words, and I didn’t realize that I really thought that deep down. I was well aware of my own mistakes and inadequacies, but they were hidden underneath an “everything’s okay with my faith” attitude. That is, until a few years ago when I went to Ethiopia, where I passed a point of no return that stripped away my “everything’s okay” attitude. It was a helpful but rude awakening.
If you want things to stay comfy, buy yourself a pillow and meditate on the pattern of your bedspread. This is not a pillow; it is a book that is about as comfortable as a cactus-covered mattress. I pray that this book will be like a line in the sand, daring you to step across it. It doesn’t matter whether you start slowly, take a heroic and perhaps naïve leap into the unknown or just stumble over it – the “how” is merely a question of personality. I hope you will discover and embrace a new dimension of faith and discipleship in your life.
By nature most of us tend to be a bit lazy, trying to bring life into a comfortable balance. Of course this is not fundamentally wrong, but so-called “balance” can actually mean stagnation. Since my degree is in the natural sciences, I understand that stagnation in systems is nearly always linked to death – and boredom.
It goes without saying that my four girls don’t beg me to go out to the swing set to just sit there for a while. No! They want to swing high enough so their toes touch the clouds. It’s not fun until the swing starts moving. It’s the same with faith in God. Just sitting around contentedly believing gets boring fast. Movement is what makes faith attractive. This is the kind of faith Jesus talks about when He challenges us to follow Him. Many books about discipleship have inspired me, but just as many have been mildly irritating, because the content didn’t seem practical or doable in my daily life. For years I’ve felt that the gap in Europe between professing faith and actually following Jesus has grown wider and wider.
In the New Testament, we read about faith that requires sacrifice and suffering, and we hear that there are an estimated 100 million Christians around the world today who are being persecuted for their faith.
Here in Europe, it seems that many have come to expect that being a Christian means that God will bring blessing without pain – like an epidural when giving birth. The only problem is that when it comes to our faith there is no pain-killing injection. Authentic, vibrant spiritual life often begins where our comfort zone ends. This can be painful, though more often merely unpleasant.
Believe me, I don’t have a secret desire to suffer! My pain threshold lies somewhere slightly above the agony of a hangnail. Naturally, my emotional pain tolerance is equally low, so I’ve developed endless strategies to avoid discomfort. My stomach starts to clench up just seeing the “drama” label on a DVD cover, before even watching the film. (But a Hollywood happy ending sets off my endorphins like a squirrel in a bathtub full of acorns.)
Nevertheless, I’m convinced that true faith requires discipleship. And discipleship, really following Jesus, has a price. We are wise to put the price tag back in place if we’ve unintentionally removed it along the way.
Besides that missing price tag, we may have other apparently good reasons for not taking the call to discipleship seriously. Maybe you were sitting in the back row when Jesus called you, and you are pretty sure that He didn’t really mean you. He was probably looking at the person in front of you. Or maybe you just see the blemishes in your life, and you’re completely convinced that Jesus could not have meant you. Following Jesus is often a struggle, but since you have an allergic reaction to the smell of sweat, and because you know that God loves you anyway in this age of grace, you find it easy to just sit on your swing set without all that back and forth movement.
This is exactly why the pages between the covers of this book contain a powerful message. Initially, it’s a message that is meant to take the pressure off as you realize, “Hey, everything is fine, we’re all unfinished people!” But then once you’re lying there all relaxed, the message of these pages should gently wake you out of your comfort zone and shove you off the edge of the bed. So, enjoy both parts and watch out for what God wants to do in and with your heart. This book is a fiery appeal to unfinished people – not to somehow legitimize or minimize sin, but to free you to live a redeemed life.
I hope that my thoughts and personal experiences will help you get rid of inappropriate pressure and feelings of guilt in your walk with Jesus, so you can enter into an authentic, exciting life of faith.
In the end we can have the conviction and an unbroken hope that God will bring us all – unfinished, yet redeemed sinners – to the finish line of faith, and that He loves to walk with us, despite our unfinished condition.
You are normal. Unfinished and, therefore, normal. Sometimes following Jesus can be rather unspectacular, but man, it can be breath-taking too.
Start swinging as high as you can!