Marching to the Beat of a Different Drummer

Reprint from Dec. 17, 2009 with additional commentary by Editor

Original Text	Editorial Commentary
Everyone is his or her own personality. We shouldn’t expect John Jones to be like us simply because we are saved and following the leading of the Spirit.	Here is a glaring fault of the Pentecostal Christian (and I am also a Pentecostal). We want to impose our way of thinking and acting on every believer in Christ. We need to get it in our minds that we are most certainly not all alike and God does not want us to be. He wants you to be You and Me to be Me – within the framework of His will.
We should no more expect John to fully conform to who and what we are than we can expect to act and react to every situation as Jesus did in His lifetime on earth. Jesus was/is God and there are some situations that are too divinely narrow for us to fit our bulbous, awkward bodies into them.	We can’t expect to be a perfect likeness of Christ. To attain that goal we would have to be God, which we are not. We should however bend every effort to attain to Christ’s moral perfection, and even that will not happen in this lifetime. Nevertheless we are obliged to continually strive for the elusive goal. When Christ calls us home or catches us away to be with Him, because He will have found us reaching for the goal, He will bestow on us His literal, perfect moral likeness.
By the same token we have no reason to force ourselves to act or react in exactly the same way that Apostle Paul would in a given situation. We can, and we should, take valuable lessons from Paul’s’ life, but we are not, and indeed cannot be, carbon copies of the Apostle or any other person, living or dead. Paul was an Apostle, we are not. Others whom we may want to be like are whatever God called them to be, something to which God has not called us. We cannot be exactly like them nor can they be like us; we are each one of a kind. The mold in which we were formed was discarded upon our entry into this world.	This is a valuable lesson: Learn to be yourself – always within the will of God of course, and we know striving to be a carbon copy of anyone else is definitely not within the will of God for us. As mentioned in the original text, we can and should learn from the lives of other God-fearing men and women, but emulating them is not pleasing to God.
If John seems to be marching to the beat of a different drummer – give John a break. If he too is walking in the Highway of Holiness and he causes no one to stumble, then we should back off.	Too often we are like chickens in an enclosure; when one of them has a small injury that should heal in a day or two, the others are drawn to the sight of blood and constantly peck at the injured fowl until eventually its minor injury becomes a gaping, profusely bleeding wound that, untended, will lead to its demise. But of course we can expect that of chickens; they have no concept of love. We do – although often we fail to show love to our “different” brother or sister.
While we are giving John his space, we can quietly and unobtrusively look for the fruit of the Spirit in John’s life. The fruit is described in Gal. 5.22 and 23. Please note that the fruit is not good deeds, but rather, character traits. None of the fruit mentioned there can be called a deed. Fruit is a part of your character, not what you do. What you do constitutes works of righteousness, which would include a myriad of things, including praying, reading the Word of God, fasting, comforting a bereaved soul, attending worship services, etc., on and on.	Jesus declared, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Therefore it does not show a lack of love if I “quietly and unobtrusively” look for the fruits of righteousness in my brother or sister. As stated in the original text, “fruit is not good deeds, but rather, character traits.”
But a reminder is in order here: Good works, no matter your sincerity or lack thereof, cannot save you. Only faith in Jesus Christ can bring salvation, which in turn produces the desired works of righteousness and the fruit of the Spirit. . Fruit of the Spirit  (Gal. 5.22-23) Love Joy Peace Longsuffering Gentleness Goodness Faith Meekness Temperance (self-control)	Paul expressed it this way: “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” (Gal 2:16) We are saved solely by faith in Christ, which faith, if it is a living faith, is bound to produce works of righteousness. It will also produce the fruit of the Spirit, in some individuals more and some less, but none can remain unfruitful without being cut down.
Jesus said, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” If, after careful scrutiny, we can detect the fruit of the Spirit in John’s deportment, then we should leave him alone and prop him up with the effectual, fervent prayers of the righteous. John may be marching to a different beat than we, but the Drummer is still God who tailors the beat to each individual Christian. Leave John alone to serve his Lord in the way his Lord wants John to serve Him.	To state it correctly, you nor I actually march to the beat of a different drummer, but to a different beat by the same Drummer. The cadence for each believer is tailored especially for him or her. Only God is able to do this and, since it is evidently of God, leave your brother or sister alone to serve God in the way that is best for them – of course all within the will of God. How God chooses to deal with them is His business, not yours.