Christians these days seem to bend over backward to make certain they never offend anyone. We want to appear as being tolerant of all things and all people. This isn’t the way Jesus lived. He loved all people, but He never minced words when it came to calling out whoever or whatever stood in opposition to the character and holiness of God. I like how A.W. Tozer put it: “This generation of Christians must hear again the doctrine of the perturbing quality of faith.”
The gospel of Jesus should perturb people. It’s a call to a radically different life and lifestyle. It’ not okay when people flaunt their sin in the presence of God. It’s not okay when we kill in the name of Jesus. And it’s never acceptable to condone the sinful deeds of ourselves or anyone else. Leading with love, we need to not follow with tolerance but rather with perturbance. We need to live out our perturbing faith.
Tozer went on to say, “People must be told that the Christian religion is not something they can trifle with. The faith of Christ will command all or it will have nothing to do with a man… His faith has resulted in an everlasting and irrevocable committal.” Faith in God must change you. If it doesn’t, you haven’t truly committed your life to Christ. The moment you declare Jesus Lord of your life, everything changes. There is no going back. There is no escape hatch or “just in case” clause. You are either committed for life or you aren’t committed at all.
This is the message people don’t want to hear. They always want the option of a plan B. There is no plan B. I take it back. There is a plan B, but you aren’t going to like it. Plan B is to spend eternity with Satan and his demons, forever separated from God and all that is beautiful and good. There’s your plan B. It isn’t worth living for yourself now to gain your plan B later. There is only one way to Heaven, one way to peace, one way to joy, and one way to salvation. Jesus is the only way. This is indeed a perturbing faith.
All this. of course. begs a couple of questions, “When was the last time your faith perturbed anyone? When was the last time you made anyone uncomfortable talking about Jesus?” The truth is most of us rarely bring up the name of Jesus during our conversations throughout the day. We’ve got Him tucked away so deep in our heart no one would ever think to ask if we knew anything about Him. Everyone knows you don’t talk religion or politics with casual acquaintances, right? Let me ask you, if Christians don’t tell others about Jesus, who will? The last thing Jesus told us to do was to go and make disciples of all people. And us? We’re too polite to warn friends and family of their impending destruction. We’re too busy tolerating sin to sound the alarm around how they are about to spend an eternity separated from God and living with Satan in Hell. It’s time we began again to demonstrate our perturbing faith. Unless of course, you just don’t care…