Jesus is our blue-print for life in
the Kingdom of God. It’s a life that starts here and now, and continues each
and every day that we live and breathe on this planet. It involves living today
as if God were on the throne of this Earth ruling it as King, right now. We
don’t have to wait until that day comes, we are invited to live under His rule
and reign today. Jesus said we cannot enter the Kingdom and follow Him unless
we daily die to ourselves and obey His teaching. This is the Gospel of the
Kingdom which Jesus came and died to preach and communicate. There is no other
Gospel in the Scripture. The Gospel of Jesus is the Gospel of the Kingdom.
Grace is an integral part of the process for those who hope to follow Jesus.
Without Grace we could not hope to daily surrender our lives and fully submit
to God’s will in favor of our own desire. Grace does not cancel out our daily
need to surrender to Jesus as our Lord.
The phrase “Jesus is Lord” is
powerless unless we actually live it out in our lives every day. Without the
daily act of surrender, it’s simply a pointless bumper sticker slogan. Simply
put, the Gospel of the Kingdom has been drowned out by the more popular
televangelical version of the Gospel that says, “Repeat this prayer after me
and you can go to heaven when you die.”
A by-product of this kind of teaching
has been the cheapening of the decision to follow Jesus with your whole life.
Instead the calling to follow Jesus is treated so lightly that I’ve seen
Christians urge total strangers they’ve only just met seconds earlier to pray
and ask Jesus into their heart so they can go to heaven when they die. It’s
almost as if they believe that this magic prayer will take anyone to heaven if
they say it twice and click their heels together. Instead, I would urge us who
follow Jesus to allow people around us to get to know Jesus first, and maybe then they can make an informed decision
about whether or not to surrender their life to follow after Him.
There’s a great story about the great
evangelist Charles Finney who would regularly tell his converts that they were
not truly converted to Christ. Imagine that. A famous evangelist urging his
newly converted to doubt their faith in Christ.
The story goes that he would cast
doubt upon their faith in Christ and send them away saying, “I don’t think you
really are a follower of Jesus yet.” After a few weeks the person would
invariably return after a season of introspection and declare that they were
now a true follower of Jesus. Finney would then find a reason to doubt them
once more and send them on their way again. Eventually the person would return,
declaring with fire in their eyes that they “knew” they were a follower of
Jesus. When Finney could no longer dissuade them he would let them go with a
nod, “You might actually be a follower of Jesus after all.”
If anything, Finney employed doubt to
test the faith of those who claimed too eagerly to be genuine disciples of
Christ. Whether or not you agree with Finney’s tactics, please don’t treat the
decision to follow Jesus too lightly. These days we are far too eager to ask a
total stranger to pray on the spot to receive Jesus, before they’ve even really
understood who He is or what such a decision might mean to their life. I
believe the decision to follow Jesus is more like a commitment to enter into a
life-long marriage and less like the decision to rent a movie. We would never
counsel someone to go into a marriage quickly, and yet we are sometimes
over-eager when it comes to pushing people to enter into an eternal relationship
with Jesus.
I would suggest we let people have a
chance to get to know Jesus before we push them into praying to receive
forgiveness and follow Him. They need to know who He is first. Can you imagine
a total stranger coming up to you on the street and leading the conversation in
such a way that you felt compelled to marry his daughter as fast as possible?
Who is this guy? What is his daughter like? Why is he so eager to get her
married off? All of these questions would be flashing into your brain as this
stranger tried to convince you that all you had to do was to repeat the vows
after him and everything would work itself out later. If you were wise you
would flee from that person as fast as possible. Yet, this is almost exactly
the sort of witnessing and evangelism that many Christians practice, or at
least visualize, when it comes to reaching others for Christ.
Jesus does not force Himself upon us.
Do not force Jesus onto those who do not know Him yet or who are not ready to
make this life-changing, eternal decision. Better yet, try living a life that
bears witness to the compassion and humility of Jesus each and every day. Maybe
then people will actually ask us why we live this way and what it was that
transformed us into such patient, compassionate, loving people. Then we can
make sure we are prepared to give to every man an answer, a reason for the hope
that lies within. Let’s live a life that provokes the question rather than
throwing around the answers to questions that no one is really asking.
k
� r�� ��e” (Matthew 19:26).
What is the thing that Jesus says is
impossible for man? It’s giving up our material possessions in exchange for the
Kingdom of God. What is it that He says is possible with God?
It’s the ability to let go of our
worldly wealth and possessions in order to gain the incomparable treasures of
The Kingdom. The response of the disciples to these words from Jesus is also
worth noting. Peter asks Jesus what will become of them since they have left
everything to follow him (in Matthew 19:27).
It was true. Each of the disciples had
walked away from their day job to dedicate themselves to Jesus as apprentices.
Peter and his brother, on the day of the largest catch of fish in their careers
as fishermen, left the fish dieing on the beach to follow Him. Matthew, the tax
collector, stood up and left the money on the table in the middle of the day to
follow Jesus.
Each of the disciples, in his own way,
turned away from his life and gave it up to discover a new way of life. In
response to Peter’s question Jesus makes an astounding promise that I’m certain
almost no one really believes. He said, “I tell you the truth…no one who has
left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for
me and the gospel will
fail to receive a hundred times as
much in this present age…and in the age to come, eternal life.” (Mark 10:29)
Here Jesus assures those who give up
worldly possessions and even family relationships, will receive back one
hundred times as much. Not just in Eternity, after death, but here and now, in
this life on Earth. Jesus promises more than a one-for-one repayment for what
is given up for the sake of following Him. He promises more than a ten percent
return on your investment. He promises more than you can imagine; One hundred
times as much, in this life and in the life to come.
Do we believe Jesus? Do we have the
faith to trust Him in this promise? Can we really let go of our dreams, our
hopes, our plans, our security, our comfort, our money in exchange for an
abiding and enduring trust that He is faithful and true to His word?
Like Paul the Apostle, I have yet to
attain this. (If you’ll indulge me a moment I will borrow from him to express
my own struggle within my comfort zone). I endure hardship, sometimes in faith,
sometimes with great complaint. I know the good I ought to do and sometimes I
fail to do it. I am the chief of sinners. I can be the most evil and petty
person you’d ever imagine one moment, and full of compassion and faith the next.
I have not arrived at perfection in Christ just yet, far, far from it, but this
one thing I do with all that is within me, I press on towards the mark of the
high calling of Christ Jesus. I urge you to do the same. I know that, here in
my comfort zone, I am in denial of the power of Christ in me. I know that,
outside of my comfort zone, I have discovered the power of Christ at work in my
glorious weakness. I want to encourage you to embrace your discomfort zone.
Jesus is waiting for you there. He can be trusted and He is faithful beyond
your wildest imagination.
�
Vc �� ��tting or the attending that we
encounter Jesus, or become empowered by the Holy Spirit. We have to be in
motion, we have to “go”, in order to be the Church that God has called us to
be. As I’ve looked through the Scriptures I don’t often notice that the power
of God falls on people when they’re in the meeting. Instead, it is when the
disciples are in the marketplace, or walking along the way, that the Spirit of
God falls on His people in power.
When God pours out His Spirit on us,
it’s for a purpose. It’s not for our personal enjoyment. God fills us up in
order to send us out. The gifts we’re given are for others, and they’re meant
to be spent on others and given away for the benefit of others. I believe this
is why sometimes when a church has grown old, or when Christians have grown
tired, we see less and less of God’s power flowing through the people. It’s
because we’ve started to build reservoirs to hold the blessings, rather than to
trust God to give us more if we continually give His gifts
away to others. The reason God doesn’t
give us more is often because we’ve started to hoard what He gave us to share with others. Much like manna, which
would rot if the Israelites took more than they needed for a single day, the
gifts of God are for sharing, not for storing up. God wants us to trust that if
we give away the blessings, He will supply us with more. In order to
demonstrate that we trust Him, we must
let go of our gifts, our talent, our
time, and even our money, and share freely with those who are in need. God will
make sure we have enough when we need it. Our job, as ambassadors of Christ, is
to develop a discipline of letting go and giving away the blessings God gives
to us so that we can be continually refreshed and blessed with the ongoing
ministry of Jesus.
Whether or not you decide to start a
house church is beside the point. The issue of who we are as Christians is
still just as important, if not more important, than what we say we believe in
our heads. Our message, the Gospel, is only relevant if our lives demonstrate
its power. Following Christ, from the very beginning, was a practice. It was
intended as a way of life, not simply a set of beliefs. The truth is that we
must begin to live out the power of the Gospel in our everyday lives, no matter
what. We must begin today.
