The Gospel Habit

There are two types of people you will never forget: those who take you to the basement, and those who take you to the balcony. The reason we can never purge our minds of these people is because they present to us a powerful picture of our future, and our future is an important topic to us.

Balcony people are like a high-defi nition television that paints a beautiful picture of hope and vitality.

Basement people leave you only with a black and white fuzzy screen of emotions and fear. Balcony people take you up, and basement people take you down.

That’s the bottom line. It’s so true, you are probably thinking of someone right now, but this article is not about them. It’s about you.

Which one are you?

When I was 17 years old, a woman named Sue taught me the power of balcony people. She took me up the stairs of destiny and showed me what Jesus himself was saying about my future. She pointed to his cross and told me how he felt about me, even in my weakness. It blew my mind. That season of my life, Sue taught me about, what I am calling here, the “Gospel habit.” It’s a habit because Jesus practiced it often and so do his true followers.

What is the Gospel habit?

I’m glad you asked. The Gospel habit is treating someone as he should and could be versus as he currently is. It’s choosing to see potential versus problem. Jesus taught again and again, that what men called “cursed” or “common,” the Father considered “blessed” and “beautiful.”

Think of the Samaritan woman at the well with whom Jesus spoke. In that day, Jewish men certainly didn’t take time to speak to women in that capacity - especially one who had scandalously and successfully tanked fi ve marriages. Jesus did. Howabout the woman with the issue of blood? She would have been considered unclean and insignifi cant.

No one in their right minds would have taken time for her. Jesus did. Also, you have the children wanting to be close to him … tax collectors, gentiles, prostitutes, sinners. The scriptures are full of his example. Jesus treated people diff erently and demonstrated the Gospel habit.

In the most unusual display of love and peace, Jesus honored “the common and cursed” - even when they were not yet used to honoring him. He knew that result would come in time.

His habit is always to honor first. He calls something holy before it actually is holy. Again, he invites us to belong before we are able to believe. Just ask “doubting Thomas.”

My point is this: Jesus set an example for us to follow.

It is a way to live powerfully and prophetically with the people whom we contact every day - taxi drivers, spouses, children, co-workers, etc. If our lives are to be salt and light, we must practice the Gospel habit of Jesus: treat as holy those things which may seem common. We will then see those things which seem common and cursed become what they have always been to God: blessed and beautiful.

JOSH FOLIART WAS A TWO-YEAR LETTERMAN FOR THE ARKANSAS RAZORBACK FOOTBALL TEAM.

HE CURRENTLY IS LEADING A CHURCH PLANTING INITIATIVE BASED IN LIMA, PERU, CALLED MULTIPLI: CULTURES OF LIGHT AND LIFE.