Picture in your head the clothes dresser in your room. How many drawers does it have? Are they all closed? (if so, pat yourself on the back, you’ve accomplished something I have never been able to do).
Now that you have your dresser in mind, I want to suggest that our lives are a lot like a dresser. By this I mean there are many fragmented parts (drawers) of our life, and they get stacked up on each other. We have the “Family” drawer, and here we act a certain way, have certain responsibilities, and spend a great deal of time. We have a “Friends” drawer, and we relate to these people in different ways than you relate to your family, and you act a bit different as well.
If you are a student, then there is a “School drawer,” or if you are a worker than you have the “Work drawer.” Then, depending on what you love to do, you may have a “Sports drawer,” or “Music drawer,” or “Photography drawer.”
Additionally, there is perhaps some type of “Health drawer,” some kind of “Finances drawer,” and finally, there is your “Religion drawer.” Whether you are a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or athiest, everyone has a religion drawer because everyone has their own answers to the big questions of life, as well as ways they act in response.
For Christians, the “Religion drawer” typically includes a Sunday morning commitment, possibly a Wednesday night event, a small group experience, and if you are really on your game, a daily devotion of reading the Bible and praying. We are taught to examine our lives and make sure that God is first. To keep with the analogy, we must constantly take a step back and look at the dresser to make sure the “Religion drawer” is at the very top.
If “Friends” have become our first priority over following Jesus, then we must make that change and bring the “Religion drawer” back to the top of the dresser. If “School” or “Work” has become our number one priority, we must move that drawer out and replace it with the Religious one.
The notion that Jesus should be first in our lives is not up for debate. Jesus himself said, “Seek first my kingdom and my righteousness, and all other things will be added.” However, what I’d like to suggest is that this Dresser perspective is wrong because it accepts a fragmented life as the way things have to be.
Here is the bottom line: it’s not about trying to keep Christianity as the top drawer on the dresser. What we need is a different perspective, a more holistic view of religious life. In keeping with the analogy, we need to discover that biblical Christian religion is the Dresser itself. Instead of striving to keep spiritual stuff at the top, we instead learn how following Jesus fills every different drawer, whether it’s family, friends, school, work, finances, or the pursuit of our passions.
The old paradigm is a fragmented life, full of struggle and striving to keep Jesus first. The new paradigm is the full life, the life of integrated faith that reflects the Lord Jesus in whatever we say or do (Colossians 3:17). The Full Life experiences the redemption of Jesus that “transforms every area of personal life and positively impacts every channel of cultural life. #LiveFully
