Being a First Responder

[HKHaugan]

An explosion rips through a building. There is screaming as hundreds head for exits and flee in all directions while at the same time scores of uniformed police and firemen run into the midst of the chaos. These are the first responders. However there were some who stayed to pull the injured from the wreckage before help arrived. They were more concerned with the people they saw hurting and needing immediate care. If we would, just for a moment, shift this scene into the spiritual dimension we would behold a world having been subjected to the explosion caused by sin, see its devastation in us and others. Something has to be done. We run into it every day and it needs a first response. Who will be aware, not just stare at the scare, really care and be there?

We need to start with the obvious again. The obvious is that each of us is unique. No one has ever been like us or will ever be like us. What this means is that every next moment for each person who has ever lived is new, unique and waiting for us to be the first to respond to that new moment. Each one of us who is alive in this world is in a response mode. Like it or not we are created to be first responders.

But in what is our response mode centered? That’s the question and a question that we are forced to follow with two others: “Are we responding spiritually and what spirit are we being led by?” There are only two answers. Both are spiritual. We are either responding out of our sin or we are responding inspired by the Spirit of God. It’s one or the other. We can only say God-inspired if we are born spiritually in Christ. Every other spirit starting with fear and pride is from the final anti-Christ, the devil. If we are not for Jesus we are against Him (Lk.11:23). And disciples of Jesus know that sin still lurks to urge us to follow the temptation of the moment.

So what about conscience? Everyone has one, believer as well as non-believer. Again, what is conscience centered in? If our conscience is stirred by the Holy Spirit we know we are in line with the Lord. Our conscience is instructed by the Word of God. Outside of God conscience is informed by whatever a culture defines as moral and immoral.

First, repentance is a first response in every next moment. Sin is why God gives us the gift of repentance. We can actually tell the Lord we are sorry and He forgives whenever we do. That is the Spirit of God prompting us. Temptation is always in front of us and the devil is always there to ignite its allure. Repentance is a first response to the newness of every next moment when that ignition occurs. We can dislodge the thought or if we give in we can turn and not go there again. This repentance path is a day to day new journey where the joy of forgiveness restores our footsteps into every next moment. As beneficiaries of this gift we pass it on as testimony to others for their every next moment.

Thanksgiving for receiving forgiveness is our second response. That thanks results in praise because God takes our life on a superhighway of new experience, new friends and new mission. We praise God because He is a God of forgiveness whose desire is to bond with us in a spiritual union freeing us from our fear filled aloneness. That connection deepens in our hearts with each repentance/forgiveness realization. It is that experience that launches us into the currents of life where the turbulence of human need springs up before us and God invites us to help Him reconcile that need with His saving grace and love. In the process the purpose for which we were created becomes our reality and our first response wherever we are.

Asking what to do next is the third. Three things happen here.

First, we find that we have avoided being relationally honest with other through defensiveness and fear of self-exposure.

Second, when we have that spiritual freedom found only in Jesus, we begin to take the layers of self-protective techniques we have used to cover our hearts. Where other people have been a threat they now become an opportunity to learn and mutually share that growth.

Third, these self-destructive techniques are what we call strongholds built on the shifting sands of fear and pride. Our ethnic, racial, religious and social barriers are dark spiritual ghettoes from which we find ourselves being resurrected. Everyone is seen in their true reality as images of God having been the victims of sin and the devil’s persecution. In Christ we all have been given the gifts of the Spirit to help each other surface that true self the Lord intended in Creation.

In these three is how we build a first responder mind, heart and spirit. So then what do we do next? You can’t help but sense the need to share with others what God has freed you from. If you want a real biblical example of a first responder try this one:

5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6)