2 Corinthians 13:6 English Standard Version (ESV) I hope you will find out that we have not failed the test.

Sixty years ago I raised my hand at an altar call. I had no idea what I was doing and I had no idea why I was doing it. I cannot even tell you now sixty years later if I was right or wrong to raise my hand.

Now with decades of obedience of faith under my belt I can say what I did not get that fateful day so long ago.

No one came along beside me and asked what was going on inside me that had led me to raise my hand. If they had, I do not know what my answer would have been then.

Like any baby just being born I could not see, everything was a blur. I did not know who to talk to about what had just happened nor did I understand why it had happened. At this moment describing what happened to me that day is irrelevant because I have had a lifetime of pondering to try and answer it for myself. I still do not have a good answer.

What I can say with confidence is what did not happen that should have happened.

I should have been discipled.

I was pushed into a leadership role in the country chapter of the Baptist Youth Fellowship. That never should have happened as I had no idea what being a Christ meant at that time. I was expected to lead others when I had no idea of what was happening to me as an emotionally confused young man. I was not confused about being a boy, I was confused about being a Christian.

The sad truth of it is that at the age of 75 I have never been discipled.

I have however discipled others successfully. When asked to develop a discipleship program I failed to achieve that goal. Because I had not been discipled my only experience was in what I had done to disciple others. That was not what leadership wanted.

My discipleship method was to show others how being a Christian works. Not to teach them, to show them.

Romans 5:1-2 English Standard Version

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Access here indicates availability. Grace is defined as unmerited favor which is what we have because of where we stand. We rejoice in hope of glory.

Now I believe that even if I do not understand everything that favor has to offer. I can believe that even if I do not know where I stand. I can rejoice in hope of a glory I do not see.

We are emotional people and emotions can be irrational. We feel emotions even before we understand what emotions are, how we obtained them, or what to do with them. We try to learn how to deal with them in our attempts to control them, or we don’t.

That takes experience and mistakes are made but we learn from mistakes. 

Once we become born again we become Kingdom children and this access we now have leaves us in a state of being with no experience in this new life. We can express empathy for those who have just come to Christ.

Empathy is an emotion related to viewing the condition of others because we ourselves have been there. Their new creation in Christ is a different experience. Empathy turns into sympathy. Their path has different experiences because of the people in their lives that were not in mine.

My emotions tell me what was lacking in my own experience that might be helpful to a new Christian. We do not know them in Christ like God does. Only God knows best how to grow them according to His will for them. We can only relate to what happened to us.

That might help but it might not. Hope in glory has everything to do with showing Christ in us in the way God worked in us. It might not help them, and then again it might.

That is up to God.