Jump into a Life of Further and Higher
Efrem Smith
David C. Cook, 2010, 175 pp., $14.99, DavidCCook.com
Efrem Smith says life is a series of jumps: the jump from high school to college; the jump from college to career. “Each leap launches us to new levels,” he writes.
Unfortunately, some of us jump in the wrong direction; or we land clumsily. Others are afraid to jump to the next level in life, preferring to stay safe and sound where they are. Such fear and self-protection are a big mistake, says Efrem. “Our faith jumps are about trusting that God is there.”
In his latest book, Jump, Efrem shares stories from his own life and guides young people (and those who serve them) to navigate these jumps in ways that keep a focus on God instead of the dangers of falling. Each jump can be another expression of our faith and trust in God. When that happens, the jumps continue as we jump into vibrant faith communities and a redemptive engagement with the world around us.
Efrem, a former columnist for YouthWorker Journal, now serves as Superintendent of the Pacific Southwest Conference for the Evangelical Covenant Church and speaks to groups through Kingdom Building Ministries. A graduate of Luther Theological Seminary, he’s the author of earlier books such as Raising Up Young Heroes and The Hip-Hop Church.
Is there anything new here? Not entirely. However, Efrem has an effective way of framing these perennial challenges to faith in fresh ways that help us reconsider how we are living our lives and where we are jumping next. He invites is to trust God, go higher than we otherwise would, and experience the freedom that makes life worth living.
See for yourself in the excerpt below.
Engage
The beloved church is one that understands that it must engage culture for Kingdom purposes. Coming to terms on how to live as God’s beloved in the culture around us is crucial. The culture here is being defined as the emerging, developing world.
It’s what’s around us—both good and bad, divine and demonic, wonderful and dangerous. Within all of that are values, language, fashion, art and a bunch of subcultures. All of this can be very complex, but also a tremendous opportunity for the church to offer God’s love to the world. In a general sense, the church has taken two approaches in its relationship with culture. One is to see culture as the enemy, and the other is to embrace the culture.
In seeing the culture as the enemy, we take a position of being primarily at war. I firmly believe this hinders the church’s ability to be a force of love within culture.
Through the years, I’ve witnessed a couple of ways in which seeing the culture as the enemy plays out. One is by defining the culture as the world of those living in the old life, the life of sin. The culture is then the dwelling place for sinners.
At the core of this position is “Before I became a Christian, I was in the world, but now that I’m a believer, I’m in the world no longer.” As a teenager, when I would hear Christians say, “I’m no longer in the world,” I wanted to blurt out, “Well, what planet do you live on now?” It stands, then, that the church is a place of refuge from the culture, a safe, Spirit-filled escape from the world.
When I was growing up, I had many friends in churches that took this position on culture. My friends attended churches that had developed a list of all the places you shouldn’t go and all the things you shouldn’t do in order not to be involved in the things of this world. In place of spending time in the world, they spent a lot of time in the church. The strategy of these types of churches was to keep you in the church building and participating in church activities as much as possible so that you wouldn’t be corrupted by the world.
Many times I felt guilty about some of the places I was going and things I was participating in when I was around them. At the same time, I really wasn’t interested in being in a church building every day of the week. I still feel this way today. However, I agree that there are places and activities that Christians should think critically about, no question.
I believe in the necessity of the new birth, so some of what my friends were proclaiming made sense to me. When we jump into the love of God and are transformed through Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we ought to look carefully at our lives. The key is that we do this based on a healthy interpretation of the Scriptures.
With this in mind, it made sense to me in making the jump into the beloved life to understand clearly the Bible’s stance on issues such as drunkenness, lying, selfishness, and sex outside of marriage. I struggled with my friends who saw going to school dances, listening to all forms of secular music and playing cards as sinful. This is a legalism based on issues the Bible doesn’t speak clearly on.
To see culture as the enemy is not the right approach, but neither is a full embracing of the culture. Some parts of the church have embraced the culture around them to the point that they have lost touch with enduring values, which are essential to advancing the beloved world. We must be careful about an embracing of the culture that causes us to question or totally move away from the authority and centrality of Scripture.
The biblical approach to culture is not about painting it as the enemy or fully embracing it. The biblical approach is to engage culture for Kingdom purposes. This is what leads to advancing the beloved world. In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks to the Father about how His followers ought to live in the world, the culture around them.
“But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world” (
We are in the culture, and we may even face opposition, but Jesus asks the Father that He keep us from the evil one. Jesus also says that we are not of this world. We are in the culture but not of it because our identity is in Christ and we are citizens of the Kingdom of God. As we read on in the chapter, He calls us as His followers into oneness.
“I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me” (
Jesus was thinking not only of those following then, but also of those who would come to know Him as Savior after He was no longer physically with them. Could He also have been mindful of those who would come to know Him generations later because of this?
Through the testimony of their word passed down generation after generation, Jesus lifts up a desire to the Father that we would be one as He and the Father are One. In the cultural reality of ethnic and racial diversity, the body of Christ seeking oneness across ethnicity and race is essential. Experiencing unity and love as empowered by God is a critical part of the beloved church.
“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are One; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me”
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The beloved church shouldn’t be divided by race, ethnicity or class because it affects our ability to engage the culture around us for Kingdom purposes. Scripture gives us many examples of engaging culture for Kingdom advancement. In
©2010 Efrem Smith. Used with permission of David C. Cook. All rights reserved.
