Instructing and encouraging you to live your life as a disciple of Jesus
I write a lot on this topic, but from what I see in my own life and the lives of the Church at large, we’re simply not getting it. We are running out of time. Every moment we spend engaged in doing something other than for the Kingdom is a moment forever lost. It’s a moment that might just cost someone their eternal salvation. While we are content to watch the latest movie, surf the web, check Facebook, or feed our faces, time is ticking off the clock forever.
Ask almost any Christian at church on Sunday what their priorities are, and they will instinctively tell you that God is first and family second. Saying so simply does not make it true. If God were first in the lives of all who proclaimed to know Him, our world would not be in the mess it is today. For that matter, if family was indeed the second priority, we would not find the divorce rate among Christians to be statistically the same as that of non-Christians (The Christian Post). We have been taught what we’re supposed to say, but there is an absolute disconnect between our lips and our reality.
It’s easy to feel as if we are stuck in our lives. We have a burning desire to follow Jesus with all of our heart, but we keep getting tripped up along the way. Progress is hard to come by when you constantly take two steps back for every one you take forward. In other words, we have our moments but no momentum. As discouragement sets in, it blinds us to the opportunities that surround us every day. Instead of focusing on our failures, we need to recognize the times in our life when we are walking in step with Christ and learn to turn those moments into momentum for tomorrow.
I heard Christine Cain give a great illustration at the Code Orange revival held earlier this year at Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC. She said to imagine she took a bottle of poison, peeled off the label, and replaced it with a label that said “chocolate sauce” and put in your refrigerator. You would then take the jar and use it expecting to be satisfied with something sweet. In reality, what was in the jar would kill you. Her takeaway point was that “The milder you make the label, the more potent the sin.” We see this same scenario play out every day in our own lives. Things may appear to be sweet and pleasurable, but when we reach out and take them into our lives, the results turn bitter and eventually lead to death.
I think we all recognize the importance of the food we allow to enter into our bodies. If we eat a lot of sweets or fried and unhealthy foods, we’re going to be fat, lazy and sick. When we eat healthy fruits and vegetables while limiting our intake of the less healthy stuff, we will be reasonably trim, energetic and healthy. Whether we choose to eat the right foods or not is an issue unto itself, but my point is we all understand at an intellectual level what we should eat and the consequences of not doing so. Yet when it comes to what we feed our minds, we seem to be much more reckless and perhaps even unaware of the consequences.