Even If i Walk Alone

Instructing and encouraging you to live your life as a disciple of Jesus

commitment

Tendrils

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John White once wrote that we must “detach our tendril hopes from crumbling walls in order to train them to climb solid Rock”.  It strikes me as lunacy that I would continue to endeavor in anything that is not of Christ.  We know that there is nothing on earth that will ever satisfy us the way His love can.  We strive to achieve fortune or fame, but to what end?  History is littered with lives of extravagant people who in the end died lonely and broken.  Is this what we desire?  Jesus promises comfort, unqualified acceptance and love.  All He asks in return is that we trust and follow Him.  How can we discard such a simple, yet fantastic, offer?

Are we so shallow that we can’t bear to give up anything that might make us feel better for a fleeting moment in exchange for that which fulfills for a lifetime (and then some!)?  We are well educated, well studied and well equipped to understand this truth better than perhaps anyone in history.  But what do we do with this knowledge but let it lie in waste?  It is a tragedy of truly epic proportions.  We understand the message of Jesus Christ, but we refuse to act upon it.  We fully comprehend the meaning and the consequences, but still we turn away.

What can one say to this generation, what would the prophets of old say to we who live in this age?  Each day we drive away from beautiful homes in our fancy cars (even having access to a car is inconceivable in parts of this world) to our well paying jobs or leisurely activities.  Every day we drive past someone who is in need.  Every day we drive past someone who could use some good news and some love.  We drive on, oblivious to the world and need around us.  We drive on, wrapped up in the petty annoyances in our own lives.  We are selfish, thoughtless and unloving people.

Maybe at this point you are annoyed.  Maybe you are thinking that you’re not as bad as all that.  You give to your church and even drop off some canned goods at the food pantry.  You hold the door for elderly folks.  Why, you even helped a blind person across the street once!  Do you do it consistently?  Do you stop every time there is a need?  Do you give love without expecting anything in return, even to those you despise?  We all fall so very short.  We cling to those things in the world that bring us status and nods of approval, and they will all crumble to dust in the end.  If we aren’t securely fastened to the solid rock of Jesus Christ and His love, we don’t stand a chance.  If we aren’t demonstrating His love in real, tangible ways, and doing so every day, we don’t stand a chance.  Our only hope is to anchor ourselves to God’s rock-solid foundation of love.  As we grow, we must cling so tightly to his love that we become one with it.  Anything else falls short and misses the mark.

What are you reaching toward for stability, where do you get your strength?  Is it from the flash and glitz of this world or is it from the rock steady love of God?  We reach out to something every day; the choice is ours.  Only one choice brings hope, peace, meaning, and ultimately, security.  Why do we reach for that which cannot protect our life, instead of reaching out to the One who gives us life?  What are your tendrils wrapped around?  Whatever it is is it safe?  Is it secure?  Only God has a foundation that can be trusted, one that will allow us to climb in freedom, safety and security.  Wrap your arms around Him, feel His love, then go and share it with everyone you meet.

Are You a True Follower?

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What is your motivation?  Why do you do what you do?  As followers of Christ, our answer to those questions must simply be ‘Jesus’.  Any other answer is unacceptable.  If any part of us seeks to glorify ourselves, we cannot call ourselves a follower of Jesus.  Following Christ is all or nothing.  We must give everything we have for Him or it simply isn’t going to be enough.  Can you say that in the depths of your heart, even when you falter, your one goal is to love God and follow the way of His Son?

If you can answer yes to the question above, welcome to the greatest adventure.  But before we embark, let’s make sure we’re being honest with ourselves.  Two simple tests will determine if we are indeed who we say we are.

The checkbook test: The first test is to take a look at your checkbook.  Where are you spending your money?  If you are spending more money on entertainment and comfort items than you are investing on building the kingdom, you cannot honestly call yourself a follower of Christ.  Followers of Christ are generous with their money and think more of others than themselves.  How can we say we care about the poor and homeless when we live in homes with four flat screen televisions and three cars?  It makes no sense.  This is why Jesus said it was so hard for a rich person to enter heaven (Mark 10:17-31).  Sometimes when we have a lot, we forget our responsibility is to give even more.  If we can’t honor God with our finances, we can’t honor Him with our life.

The time diary test: For two weeks, keep a time diary, a journal of how you spend your time.  Record, in thirty minute intervals, how you spend your time.  Feel free to adjust the time interval to suit your personality; but recording shorter intervals can be tedious, leading to frustration and eventually giving up.  Recording in longer intervals pretty much guarantees you will lose details and leave out some forgotten items.  At the end of your two weeks, add it all up and see where you are spending the majority of your time.  How does God rank?  Where do you spend more time, with God or with your television?  Do you spend as much time helping others as you do playing video games or playing sports?  Do you spend more time eating than feeding others?  Remember, following Jesus means sacrificially giving up our lives to love and serve others.  How does Jesus rank in your time diary?

If you failed either test (or even both), there is good news.  First, the very fact that you took the time to examine your life proves you have a strong desire to live your life as a true follower of Christ.  Second, it’s not too late to make the changes necessary to pass both of the above tests.  Do you want to be a true follower of Jesus?  It’s within your power.  Love God and pray for His power in your life to help you live it in a manner pleasing to Him.  Then, make the change.  Don’t wait, don’t put it off.  You only get one shot at living this life.  Make sure you live it as a follower of Jesus.

The Wild, Wild West

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Most readers of this blog reside in Western cultures, cultures that find Christianity on the decline.   This is a driving factor in our recent posts promoting leaving Christianity for a life of following Christ.  Christianity has ceded to the pressures of the secular world, it has been compromised.  Conversely, following the way of Jesus permits no compromise.  So before continuing on in your life, you must make a decision.  Will you continue to live the life of a traditional western Christian or will you instead choose the radical, love infused way of following Jesus?

Perhaps you are uneasy with a call to turn from Christianity, but take a look at what modern Christianity typically represents:  right wing conservative politics, bitter infighting, large buildings that drive most churches into large debt, comfortable homes in the suburbs, racial division along the lines of worship preference, a hierarchical view of sin (for example the belief that homosexuality is worse than lying, or that murder is more sinful than pride).  I could go on for the entire length of this post, but the list is already sickening enough.  Which items in the previous list (and feel free to add your own) look like the way in which Jesus lived?  Which of these traits demonstrate the love of Jesus?  I hope you begin to see my point about modern, Western Christianity.  It is quite possibly too late to try and redefine the term ‘Christianity’.  Thus, for those of us serious about truly following the way of Jesus, in loving the way Jesus did, we need a new term to help define our mission.  I submit that we bring back the original term for Christians, that of “followers of the Way”.

We need to return to living in community with one another, caring for one another and sharing in the needs (physical, emotional, financial) of one another.  True community is incredibly messy.  It is life altering; it requires us to live outside of our comfort zones and in deference to one another.  We need to say ‘no’ to expensive building projects so those seeking Jesus might be better entertained or more comfortable.  If someone is choosing between Heaven and Hell, do you really think it matters in the slightest whether or not they are making that choice in an air conditioned padded seat or on a park bench?  The modern church has totally lost its bearings and understanding of what is truly important to God, what we as church were really called to do.

No sin is greater than another in the eyes of God, and we are all guilty without the blood and love of Christ.  We need to get over our judgment of others; we need to cross so-called “racial lines” to engage with those of different cultural backgrounds than our own.  We need to share Christ by showing love to those in our neighborhoods and communities.  We don’t need another mega church; we all are already part of the one church, the body of Christ.  Instead of larger places of worship, we need smaller pockets of community.  One church building will never change the world, but the Church can and will if we are simply following the Way!

What’s your take away, what do you do now?  How is it you will choose to live?  Will you go back to your daily life and comfortable church buildings?  Or instead will you take the first steps of turning your neighborhood into a community of followers of the Way?  Will you take the first step in redefining what you will do with Jesus?  Do you want traditional Western style Christianity, or do you want to be a sold-out, burning flame of love as you seek to become a true follower of the Way of Jesus?  It’s a no-brainer for me.  I want to love as Christ did.  I want to follow His way.  I want to so closely follow in His footsteps that I (to quote Shane Claiborne) “get His dust on me.”  How about you?

Following the Way

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Regular readers of this blog know we talk a lot about love.  We talk a lot about following Christ.  It’s easy to say we love people, and perhaps easy even to think we are following Christ, but what does this really mean?  What does following Christ look like in the daily grind of our lives?

If we would truly follow Christ, one of the biggest shifts we need to experience is the way we see events unfolding around us.  Instead of blaring our horn and cursing the driver who just cut us off, we need our first instinct to be to pray for that driver.  Pray for their protection and others as they drive erratically.  Pray for the person themselves… perhaps they have had a horrible day and that’s why they are behaving as they are.  Perhaps they need someone to love them; pray God would send someone into their life to show them love.  Instead of driving by someone who has car trouble, we need to instead see what we can do to help.  Watch for people in the grocery store for whom you might be able to buy some groceries.  Take a walk around your neighborhood.  Are there lawns that need mowing, any obvious outside repairs you could assist with?  All of these random acts of love come at a cost; some may cost us financially, but all will cost us our time.  All will require sacrifice and unselfishness.  To put it another way, all these acts will require love.

Therein lies the rub.  Most of us would agree that we want to be the people who do the acts described above.  But how many of us take the time to be that person?  How many of us discipline ourselves to think before we act or before we speak?  How many of us are willing to put our own agendas aside to truly be the hands and feet of Jesus?  When it comes down to it we still struggle with our own self importance and selfishness.  We would rather love ourselves, so to speak, rather than give that love to others.  Jesus showed the perfect example of a selfless life.  Look at how often He interrupted His day to take the time to touch someone in need.  This never disturbed His agenda, because His agenda was love.  Until our agenda becomes one of showing love to others, of serving others in ways big and small, we will continue to see people as an interruption.  People were not an interruption to Jesus, they were His mission.  If we are to follow the way of Jesus, they will be our mission as well.

Are we willing to give up our plans and dreams to follow Christ?  We cannot claim to be a follower of Christ and have a mission that is different from His.  Our own dreams must be able to exist in parallel with loving and serving others or those dreams must be put aside.  If the heart and purpose of our dreams is not loving and serving others, then we are not followers of Christ.  We will be like those mentioned in Matthew, where we say “Lord, did we not prophesy and cast out demons in Your name?”, and He will say those crushing words: “Depart from Me, because I don’t know you.” (Matthew 7:13-23)  Knowing who Christ is is not enough.  Believing in Christ is not enough; even demons believe in Jesus and know who He is (James 2:19).  We must follow Him with all that we are, and that means taking every opportunity to love and serve others.  Check your mission today.  Is it in line with the way of Christ?  If not, begin correcting your course immediately.  Realign your life and schedule to be in sync with God’s mission.  Seize every opportunity to love and serve those around you; make that your agenda in life.  Do this and you will truly be a follower of Christ.

Press On

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When is enough, enough?  When can we cease all our work and let someone else pick up the slack?  As workers for the Kingdom, we are not allowed the concept of quitting.  We are to work until our King returns or brings us to join Him.  For me, the purpose for my writing is the hope that I may touch another with the love of Christ.  I can never stop writing, because there will always be the possibility that I may yet touch another.   We can never cease to love because we will ever have the opportunity to love still another.

Following Christ can be both exhilarating and utterly exhausting.  We have to be on our game twenty-four hours a day.  We cannot afford to relax our standards or forsake our mission for even a minute, because that may be the very moment someone needs to see a difference in us.  As I have stated before, we make decisions every second of every minute of every hour of every day.  We choose to follow Christ or not.  We choose to love or not to love.  We choose to serve or not to serve.  Our second by second choices add up to define our lives.  Fortunately (or not in some cases) we have the opportunity to start redefining our life every single second.  Determine right now to start making the right choices when life comes at you: follow Christ, love and serve others.

The brilliant dichotomy of this exhausting challenge is that as we do these things we will be overwhelmed with a peace and rest that we could never achieve on our own.  God renews us in the most amazing and pure way.  If you are feeling run down and exhausted, chances are you aren’t making the proper choices in your life.  When you start loving and serving others you lose your self-centeredness, and this selfishness is perhaps the most exhausting element in our lives.  I have found that it is far more tiring to try and make my life comfortable and easy than it is to serve someone else.

We aren’t called to comfortable and easy, we are called to a life of serving others.  We are to serve others just as Jesus served us by humbling Himself and ultimately laying down His life for us.  Who do you love with a love like that?  Anyone?  Jesus loves everyone with that same amazing love.  He never stops, He never quits.  We can do no less.  The next time you grow weary, instead of resorting to your usual forms of comfort, try looking around and showing love to someone else instead.  When you feel lonely and in need of help, try serving someone else.  You will find the most illogical yet most exhilarating peace you have ever known.  Remember that there will always be someone else in need of love, there will always be someone else we can serve.  We must not quit, we must not tire.  With a set and limited amount of time to share love with others, we can’t afford to waste a second.