In her book, “Passport through Darkness”, Kimberly L. Smith writes, “who of us wants to give up our notion of what we think our lives should look like so that we are available for Him to use?” Read that again and let it sink in. I think it hits at what lies at the root of our reluctance to fully surrender our lives to Jesus. We all have dreams and ambitions, a vision for what we want our lives to look like. Quite honestly, serving Jesus tends to get in the way of the pursuit of those dreams. Following Christ necessitates that we let go of all of our ambitions and plans; all of them, no exceptions. That’s a heavy cost that most are not willing to pay.
Archives for June 2014
Gateway Sins
According to Wikipedia, “The gateway drug theory (also called gateway theory, gateway hypothesis and gateway effect) states that the use of less deleterious drugs can lead to a future risk of using more dangerous hard drugs or crime.” I think sin is a lot like this. Satan uses a “gateway sin” strategy to lure us into situations where we never expected to find ourselves. I’ve observed that the strategies of Satan are fairly consistent, merely variations on a theme. His goal, much as it was in the Garden of Eden, is to only slightly blur the lines for us. He doesn’t try and whitewash the entire canvas.
Reflecting Jesus
Unfortunately, rarely does a day go by where you don’t read or see a story where a “Christian” is saying or doing something that impugns the character of Christ. I hope they meant well by their actions, but the reality is they make Jesus less attractive to the public. A lot of this can be traced to some really bad theology taught in the last couple hundred years. Ultimately the blame rests on we who swallowed the teaching without ever bothering to test the validity of it. We are all imperfect beings and we all have our own issues. But we must never forget that the reason for our existence is to reflect the love and beauty of Jesus Christ.
Why Are You a Christian?
Why do you follow Jesus? Is it because you are looking to have your physical or material needs met? A large number of Christians only pray in times of need. As long as things are cruising smoothly along, they have little time for prayer and even less time to actually pursue the mission of Christ. Jesus is just something that sounded good at some point in their lives, but that was a long time ago. Now He is not much more than a convenient source of help when problems arise. Living this way is sacrificing your future for some very short lived pleasures today.