The 10-Second Rule: Following Jesus Made Simple - Hardcover

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Clare DeGraaf is a follower of Jesus, an elder, Bible teacher, and blogger. For more than thirty years, he’s been a full-time spiritual mentor of men all over the world—from college students to business and church leaders. At age thirty-one, a crisis of faith led Clare to reject his cultural Christianity, sell his successful manufacturing business, and devote the balance of his life to serving God. Clare and his wife, Susan, live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and are the parents of six children and grandparents of fifteen.

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The 10-Second Rule

CHAPTER ONE

A Rule of Life

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.

It has been found difficult and left untried.

—G. K. CHESTERTON

The knock on the passenger-side window was so loud and unexpected it startled them both—father and son. That the father had been in the middle of an ATM withdrawal, cash in hand, only heightened his anxiety. But when he turned toward the sound of the knocking, his reflexes now on full alert, heart pounding, there was only a frail old woman standing at the passenger window, her nose nearly touching it, looking timid and more frightened than he was. The father almost laughed out loud. She’d scared the wits out of both of them! “Son, roll down your window, please,” he said. For his son’s sake he tried to sound more confident than he felt.

“Is there any way you could help me get some food for my grandchildren?” the old woman asked.

The father, a former lawyer recently turned pastor, was skeptical. He saw no reason to be afraid of this woman, but neither did he see any reason to trust that she was telling the truth. Was this a scam? It didn’t help that his son, his face turned away from the woman only two feet behind him, pled desperately with his eyes: No!

The father recalled a conversation he and I had had only weeks before about why we’re often so reluctant to simply obey God when he offers us unexpected or inconvenient assignments. This one seemed to qualify on both counts.

Nevertheless, he invited her to get in the car and they went off to the grocery store. As they were loading the bags in the trunk, the father made the mistake of asking if there was anything else she needed. Reluctantly, the woman mentioned that she also had a prescription for medication she couldn’t afford. So of course more of the ATM cash disappeared at the pharmacy.

When the father offered to drive her and her groceries home, she was both surprised and grateful. She sat quietly in the backseat for most of the trip, but as they neared her home, she asked, “You’re Christians, aren’t you?”

“We are,” he said.

“I thought so. Just before I saw your car at the ATM, I was sitting on the bench at the bus stop and I asked Jesus to send me a Christian.”

As father and son pulled away from the old woman’s house, the son asked a million questions, and the father realized that more had gone on than simply meeting another person’s needs. His obedience had created a teachable moment. The son wasn’t convinced that this had been the smartest thing his dad had ever done, but he was at least impressed with his father’s spontaneous generosity and willingness to obey God.

Almost all of us have done similar things from time to time: random acts of grace and generosity. They make us feel alive, don’t they? That’s because they give us a taste, a glimpse, of what we were really created for.

It’s like one of those ads on TV for a new car that they’ve not yet released. They’re teasing us, tempting us with flashing images as the new model passes through stands of trees, reflected in mirror-smooth lakes. The maker wants to whet our appetites.

Your maker does, too. And if you ignore your comfort zone long enough to jump at the chance to be spontaneously generous and kind when God throws those opportunities your way, you may be prompted to ask, What if I could actually live like this every day? Not just giving away money, but giving myself away? What if these spontaneous acts of kindness and obedience happened so frequently, maybe a dozen times a week, that they become as natural and habitual as brushing my teeth or checking my email?

The answer is that you’d be experiencing the natural consequence of a surrendered life. And in the divine math of the kingdom, when we give ourselves away, we actually discover our true purpose for life—the normal Christian life.

If you do, your legacy will be a string of a thousand stories, just like these:

A woman stood in the checkout line at the supermarket. The poor woman right in front of her, the one trying to corral three small children, was having a meltdown. It was every young mother’s nightmare and then some.

One of her children was standing, runny nose and all, in the now-empty shopping cart; another was wailing at around a hundred decibels and hugging mom’s leg like it was a tree in a hurricane; a third had run off somewhere. Meanwhile, the frantic young mom’s only credit card had been denied. She’d dumped half the contents of her purse onto the grocery belt and was desperately pawing through the clutter of keys, crumpled receipts, makeup, and baby gear, trying to find enough cash to pay for the groceries, now bagged and ready. Like any good mother, she was also scanning the area for her missing son, in full panic mode.

The unfortunate mom appeared to be in her early thirties, but time and life had not been gentle. The lines on her face, the limp strands of hair now straggling across it, and the cheap clothes she wore screamed poor—poor financially and poor in spirit. If to such belongs the kingdom of heaven, in the next life she might be queen. But right now, hope for anything other than day-to-day survival had fled; hers was the face of desperation. Suddenly she slowed and stopped, both hands in the pile of purse contents on the checkout counter, eyes staring blankly downward at nothing, as if she had reached the end of her energy and of whatever momentum had been carrying her forward.

The woman behind her who’d been watching quietly spoke. “Here, this ought to take care of it.” She handed the clerk her credit card. The clerk looked from the credit card to the startled young mother. Neither seemed to know what to do next.

“You don’t have to do that,” the mother said, swiping the hair out of her face. She looked even more embarrassed than before. Finding her drive once again, she resumed clawing through the pile from her purse.

“No, I’m serious,” said the woman in line, discreetly enough to preserve what little was left of the mother’s dignity. “Please let me do this for you—and for your children.” She motioned for the clerk to complete the transaction. “I’ll watch your groceries if you want to go find your son.”

The young mother was clearly struggling to understand what had just happened, but with that reminder, her mothering instincts kicked in. After a quick, embarrassed “Thanks,” she hurriedly dumped her stuff back into her purse and, with one child in her arms and the other clasped tightly by the hand, rushed off in search of her lost lamb.

A few moments later, when the Good Samaritan saw the mother returning, family restored, she turned to leave.

“Stop, please,” called the young mother. Dragging her three still-squabbling children up to the cart of bagged groceries, she said to the woman standing next to them, “Thank you so much, but have we met?”

The woman smiled. “No, I don’t recall seeing you before.”

“But then why did you offer to pay for my groceries?”

“I’m a Christian,” the woman said simply. “As I stood behind you, I sensed that God was telling me to pay...