Biography
Colleen Townsend Evans is a Corporator of the Presbyterian Ministers Fund, a member of the Board of the Christian College Coalition and a member of the Board of Directors of World Vision, US. She has a strong interest in human rights, is personally involved in "One Ministries", a church-related inner city ministry to the poor and is a member of the Hunger Committee of the National Presbyterian Church. She is the author of several books including several bible studies and Start Loving: The Miracle of Forgiving, Teaching Your Child to Pray, and Bold Commitment which she co-authored with her husband. She now resides in Washington, D.C. with her husband, Louis, who is pastor of the National Presbyterian Church. Dr. and Mrs. Evans have three sons. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"Growing in the Likeness of Jesus" 
Speaking from a very personal level, I would like to speak to you about a hunger in my life. As a believer in Jesus Christ, a new and awakening hunger has come to me in these last months - particularly during this last year - when, I believe, that what the world needs to see is that what we as Christians believe about Jesus Christ makes a difference in the way we live. So what I want to share is simply my journey of these last months as I have been looking for a new way to demonstrate that my life truly belongs to him. What I feel I need is perhaps what you, too, might feel your need is today. What I need is to grow in the likeness of my master. Talk is one thing and walk is another.

As I was reading in Matthew 10, I came to a verse that spoke to me in a very deep way. Jesus said, "It is enough for the student to be like the teacher, and it is enough for the servant to be like the master."

Now, I'd like to share with you my study and my journey of this last year. Jesus said, "As the Father has loved me, in the same way have I loved you. If you obey my commands you will remain in my love. My command is this: that you love one another as I have loved you." It seems to me that these are very strong words, even harsh words, for Jesus isn't asking, he is commanding us to live and to love in his likeness.

And not only here, but all through Scripture, love is at the very heart of God's dealing with his people. What is this love like, this love that we are to reflect to the world? It is the love that the Father has for the Son and that the Son has for you and for me.

It is an everlasting love. In Jeremiah 31, God says to us, "I love you with an everlasting love." A love that never stops, it is an unconditional love, a love that forgives. Whenever I find it difficult to believe this kind of love that forgives anything, I remember Jesus and I picture in my mind that last evening that he spent on earth and I see him in that upper room, washing the disciple's feet. The Scriptures tell me that he washed all of their feet - even those of his betrayer. And in my mind's eye, I guess because I visualize things a lot, I see Jesus going to Judas and without a moment's hesitation, and knowing full well what Judas is about to do, he kneels at his feet and he washes them.

At some point, it seems to me, Jesus must have caught the eye of Judas and, with a look that must have pierced his heart, he said, "Judas, there is nothing that you can ever do that will ever make me stop loving you." And it's that kind of love that Jesus has for us. And it is that kind of love he asks us to have for others.

I don't know about you, but I have a Judas or two in my life and only Christ within me - only Christ within you - can help us love that Judas and wash that person's feet.

Love doesn't mean that we always like everyone. I think that's a wonderful thing to remember. It doesn't mean that we are going to approve of what everyone does any more than Jesus approved of what Judas did. What it does mean is that no matter how much hurt or humiliation a person may bring to us, we will never seek anything but their highest good. It has to do more with our mind and our will than it does with our emotions. We decide, we choose to love in that way. Jesus not only asks us to love in this way, he embodies that kind of love and enables us to love in that way. Jesus never asks us to do something for which he does not also give us the power.

Mother Theresa of Calcutta says that Jesus our God would never command the impossible and he commands us to love. It was Temple Gardner of Cairo who said, "It is not I but it is Christ loving through me." That's the secret. The mystery of Christ within us is the only way you and I can love the people who hurt us in life.

This love with which we are called to love others is one that reflects the love of Jesus it crosses every line. In Colossians 3:11 we read, "In your new life in Christ, one's nationality or race, one's education or social position is absolutely unimportant. Such things really mean nothing." What matters is that a person belongs to Christ and Christ is equally available to all. Jesus asks you - and he asks me - to follow him across cultural lines.

In 1986, I had the privilege of working in preparation for the Billy Graham Crusade in the greater Washington area. As we worked together across all lines of denomination, of race, of education, of theological position and background we were united in one thing - the love of Jesus Christ and serving him. We had an experience of unity that was so powerful and as people in the city saw this unity they said, again and again, "Only God could be the source of that kind of love." Someone has said, "When that kind of love is seen then the message can be heard." As you and I cross those lines of culture and race and every conceivable kind of barrier and are united with people as human beings in the bonds of the love of Jesus Christ we reflect to the world a very unique, different kind of love.

We are also to reflect the concerns that Jesus had. Dr. Bob Pierce, the founder of World Vision, made a wonderful statement - really it was a prayer. He said, "God let my heart break with the very things that break your heart." With that kind of compassion World Vision was born. I believe that as followers of Jesus Christ we are to reflect that kind of love, that kind of concern, where we are willing to let our hearts break with the things that break the heart of God.

Jesus had a definite concern - almost an obsession - with the Kingdom of God. He was a Kingdom person and we are to be Kingdom people as we follow him. We are to be obsessed as he was with reaching out to those who are lost, reaching out to those who have not yet heard about Christ and reaching out across every conceivable line. As we become more like him, as we grow in his likeness and become more and more obsessed with his Kingdom, we, too, will have that deep satisfaction of knowing that our lives are being spent on the one venture which will outlast our lives, which will in fact outlast everything - the Kingdom of God.

Then, I believe, that we must begin to learn to share Jesus' concern for the poor. Scripture is absolutely bursting with evidence that God is concerned for justice and for the poor. We have a friend who has done a study of this and he tells us that there are over 3,000 verses in Scripture that deal with this subject of the poor, the hungry, the disenfranchised. There really is no getting away from the fact that if you and I move beyond whatever particular political or cultural or social bias we have and go right to the Scriptures, we have to be concerned for the poor, for the poor are at the very heart of God.

Proverbs 17:5 says, "He who mocks the poor insults his Maker." And in the New Testament when Jesus gives his inaugural address he says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor." The Spirit of the Lord is to be upon us as we, too, take up his concern and pour our lives out in ministry to the poor.

When Louis and I moved to Washington, D.C., we found ourselves in the heart of a city where we had an opportunity to be exposed in a new way to the poor. And so, in an obedience that we felt was made very clear to us, we moved into the heart of the city where for the very first time in our lives we were exposed to people who were hurting and hungry. We found that people whose statistics we read in the Washington Post became very real, people with names, faces we recognized, people we knew. Believe me, it has made such a difference as our lives have been stretched and as God has reoriented our priorities to make room for the poor in our lives.

Of course, Jesus was not only speaking to the poor who were hungry and without power, he was also talking to the poverty stricken in spirit. But we can make no mistake, Jesus was not only talking to poverty of spirit, he cared so much about the poor that he told his disciples, then and now, that as we serve the poor we are literally serving him, as we serve the least of these, his brothers and his sisters, we do it unto him.

So you and I have the opportunity to grow in the likeness of Jesus if we will pick up the basin and the towel and be willing to serve with him in all walks of life. In as much as we do it to the least of these, his brothers and sisters, we are literally serving him and we do it as an act of worship.

Then, I believe we are to grow in the likeness of Jesus and I know this is true in my own life. We need to grow in his joy. Jesus said, "I have loved you even as the Father has loved me and I have done this so that your cup would be filled with joy, yes, I want your cup of joy to overflow." We are to reflect the joy of Jesus to this world. Jesus was not the only one who taught that. Paul, also, in the Epistle to the Philippians, said not once, but fourteen different times, "Rejoice, again I say rejoice." It is no wonder that scholars call Philippians the "Epistle of Joy."

Not only there, but all through scripture, joy is seen as a mark of the true disciple of Jesus Christ. The Bible puts it very simply. It says that joy is a fruit of the Spirit of God. When we open our hearts to Christ he promises to dwell within them and we become a child of God. So joy is our birthright, it's not something we can earn or work up to in our lives, but something we can have by virtue of the one who loved us and gave himself for us. Where Christ is there is joy.

Joy, someone has said, is a banner that waves above the castle that shows the world the King is in residence. Pope John XXIII said it in another way. He said that joy is the infallible proof that God is in our lives. In the 18th century when Jonathan Edwards was looking for signs that separated a kind of superficial religious experience from the real thing he said that joy was absolutely central, a dead give away, that God was or was not in a person's life. And surely, joy is one of those wonderful, uncommon gifts that, after love, people associate most closely with our faith.

Joy is for this very moment. Joy is not for tomorrow or someday when things are going better for us. Joy is for right this minute. Jesus took joy in the moment. He took joy in everything and everyone around him and so should we. Paul said to the Philippians, "Every time I think of you I thank God, and every time I pray for you I pray with joy." I believe that we should tell the people in our lives that they bring us joy.

I remember when I was making this study, it dawned on me that I had never really told my husband, the one who shared Christ with me for the first time, how much joy he had brought into my life. So I marched to his study and told him that he brought me joy. His answer shocked me. He said, "Cokie, you have never said that to me before." Shame on me for not telling the man who has meant most to me on a human level how much joy he has given to me. Tell the people in your life that they have brought you joy. And if you can't tell them, write it to them. Think of the joy that you can give someone with a simple postage stamp.

But Paul's deepest joy was not in people, as much as he cared for them, but joy was in his relationship with his master. It was that rich friendship with Christ that brought the deepest joy to Paul's life and so it will be for you and for me. George McDonald wrote that it is the heart that isn't quite sure of God that is afraid to laugh in his presence. It is precisely God's presence in our lives that frees us to joy and to laughter.

Many of us tend to confuse joy with something much less than joy. We think of it in a very shallow way. We think of it as prosperous circumstances or happiness or pleasure or maybe even fun. These things can co-exist with joy but they are not joy. Joy is something that is so deep and so different it is like marrow in a Christian's bones, and it is something that the world cannot take away from us. It is untouched by the various trials that might come our way.

Listen to what it says in Corinthians. It says that we may be knocked down in life but never out. Our hearts may ache, but at the very same time, if God is with us, we can have the joy of the Lord in our lives. This is the promise, that joy is to be ours, but joy is not the absence of pain. Joy is the presence of God and no one can take it away from us.

This brings us to the last point that I would like make today as we talk about the ways that I feel that I need to grow in the likeness of Jesus in my life. There are so many ways, but this last way is one in which I would be less than honest if I did not speak about it this afternoon. I believe as we follow Jesus Christ, as we grow in his likeness, we must grow in our willingness to pay the cost of being like him. Jesus said again and again that if we would follow him in this life, we would also have to suffer with him. He said that if we identified with him and his life that, as people persecuted him, they would also persecute us. At one place he said, "If the world hates me, you have to know that it is going to hate you as well." The Apostle Peter said, "Dear friends, don't be surprised when you suffer, as though something strange is happening to you, but rather rejoice that you can share in the suffering of Christ and that you are called by his name."

You know, we do tend to be surprised, don't we? We do think it's strange when good people have to suffer. So often I hear people say, "Why does she have to suffer? She's so good." I have to answer that perhaps we should not be saying, "Why do we as Christians suffer?" But, "Why is it we do not suffer more?" In my own life I have to ask myself if my likeness to my master is so slight that people can't see that I belong to him. I don't believe that we should look for suffering - that would not be healthy - but I do believe we are promised it will come to our lives at some place and some time. And when it comes we should not be surprised, but rather, as Peter said, praise God that we bear his name.

Brothers and sisters, as we grow in the likeness of Jesus we will know suffering some place along the way. For if we reflect his love to the world - a very different, unique love - if we are filled to overflowing with his joy to the place where it spills out on everyone around us, if we are Kingdom seekers, if we are people who not only care about the poor but are willing to give our lives seeking justice for them, believe me, some people are going to be very uncomfortable with us and some people very angry and we will know suffering somewhere along the way. That's the cost of growing in the likeness of Jesus.

But there is one thing more, for Jesus said if we grow in his likeness we will literally be his salt, rubbed into society, his light turned on in a very dark world. When that happens we will know that following Jesus is no tame, humdrum experience, but the most thrilling adventure the human heart could ever know.