Every now and then you hear a statistic that nearly knocks you off your feet. This week my pastor mentioned in his sermon that $450 billion dollars will be spent on Christmas shopping this year. That’s mind-numbing enough, but he had one more statistic to add. We could feed the entire world for $15 billion. Quick math shows we could feed everyone who is hungry 30 times over, just on what we will spend on Christmas this year alone. We’ve gotten things upside down in the Kingdom. We love to say, “Jesus first”, but our spending habits dictate otherwise.
mission
Generalities
Christians love to speak in generalities. As long as we don’t get too specific, we can all just get along. As long as we don’t get too specific, we can live just like everyone else. Did you ever notice how Jesus only dealt in specifics? It was as if He didn’t even recognize gray as a color! Jesus never left any wiggle room; it was always black or white. As followers of Jesus, our own lives should be identified by the specific things we do, not by some general sense of what we believe. A general knowledge of anything yields little; specific action is how results are delivered.
Every Breath
I just returned from a conference where I heard Francis Chan speak. He emphasized taking a deep breath and then realizing it could be the last one you ever get. Our lives are so finite. Most of us don’t think a lot about death. The younger you are, the less you will think about it and the further away it will seem. While this statistically makes sense, we have all heard of those who were cut down in the prime of their life. An unexpected diagnosis or accident brings what once seemed so far away into the present reality of our here and now.
Nothing to Fear
An old song has been stuck in my head over the last day, causing great conviction and peace all at once. I often find myself in the throes of these dichotic emotions, so I’m quite comfortable living in such unusual tensions! The song that has been niggling in my brain is “Reckless Faith”, by Rick Cua. While the entire lyric is great, the piece that has lodged itself in my mind is “While others play it safe/ Give me reckless faith”. I love that. What if we all had a healthy dose of reckless faith? What if we were totally unafraid and refused to play it safe?
Obedience is the Test of Love
A.W. Tozer once said, “The final test of love is obedience.” This is such a profound truth, yet one that is consistently overlooked or ignored in our modern version of Christianity. Ours is an era of “cheap grace”, meaning salvation is ours for the asking and requiring no more of us than the request itself. Following Jesus requires more than mere belief that He is the Son of God; it requires more than believing He was crucified and rose from the dead. Even demons believe this (James 2:19)! To be welcomed into the Kingdom of God, we must not only believe, but also be madly in love with Jesus. And the final test of love is obedience.