Brian said something that spoke to me in one of his archived talks as he was going through the Sermon on the Mount. "For the Christian there is nothing secular." Amen! May all Christians take that to heart and never forget it.
May we never forget that the whole world belongs to God.
May we never forget that we are working for Christ.
May we use everything in his service. Our "natural" abilities, our spiritual gifts, our resources, and our position in life. Because, really, its not ours anyway. Its all his.
May we remember that in every thing we do, at every place we go, with every person that we meet, at every time, there is an opportunity to serve our Lord in some way.
May we never be content to have God in our lives only for an hour on Sundays.
May we never be content to let "the church" do the service work, as if we were not part of the body of Christ ourselves.
May we never be content to shove prayer only into a 5 minute time slot every night and maybe now and again before we eat.
May we never be content to know the gist of God's Word without opening it up and studying it with a pure heart.
May we always love and serve the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, doing everything for his glory. If we do that, guess what? There's nothing left. There's nothing for another master. There's no separation of the "sacred" and the "secular". There's no putting God in a box.
Grace and Peace
Showing posts with label discipleship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label discipleship. Show all posts
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Take Up Your Cross
On a television show I heard some of tonight they mentioned the cross. Well, they mentioned a cross, and they didn't mention it right. They made a joke. One character said "we all have our cross to bear" and the other responded "here comes your cross now", talking about another person who was approaching. This is undoubtedly a reference to Jesus saying "take up your cross and follow me".
However, its not a very good one.
This is a misconception many have. That "taking up your cross" means to bear with some burden in your life. A thankless job. A handicap or illness. A difficult relationship. And so on. This is not what it means.
Think about what the cross means. To us as Christians today its a symbol of atonement, grace, mercy, love, forgiveness, redemption, etc. In the time of Christ the cross was not a symbol of any of those things. In the minds of the people at that time it meant one thing: death. Christ carried his cross to his death, and that is most likely what he was referring to by his statement.
So we're not talking about mere burdens, but death. Whose death? Ours! We must die to self and follow Christ. Remember that Jesus followed up with "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for me will save it."
What does it mean to die to self and follow Christ? We put Christ first in all things. He is more important than our friends, our families, our money, our jobs, our hobbies, our reputations, and even our lives.
That doesn't mean that we cut off our friends, leave our families, give away all our money, quit our jobs, abandon our hobbies, and go live in a hut. But it does mean that we must be willing to part with anything to follow Christ if it comes down to it. For some people in some cultures, choosing to follow Christ really does mean leaving everything behind and risking death. Many of us will never have to go through such an extreme to follow Christ, but we all should be willing to. For those that actually have, how wonderful for them to have such a great proof of their faith for themselves -- and how wonderful their stories are to inspire us believers who have it so much easier comparatively.
Grace and Peace
However, its not a very good one.
This is a misconception many have. That "taking up your cross" means to bear with some burden in your life. A thankless job. A handicap or illness. A difficult relationship. And so on. This is not what it means.
Think about what the cross means. To us as Christians today its a symbol of atonement, grace, mercy, love, forgiveness, redemption, etc. In the time of Christ the cross was not a symbol of any of those things. In the minds of the people at that time it meant one thing: death. Christ carried his cross to his death, and that is most likely what he was referring to by his statement.
So we're not talking about mere burdens, but death. Whose death? Ours! We must die to self and follow Christ. Remember that Jesus followed up with "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for me will save it."
What does it mean to die to self and follow Christ? We put Christ first in all things. He is more important than our friends, our families, our money, our jobs, our hobbies, our reputations, and even our lives.
That doesn't mean that we cut off our friends, leave our families, give away all our money, quit our jobs, abandon our hobbies, and go live in a hut. But it does mean that we must be willing to part with anything to follow Christ if it comes down to it. For some people in some cultures, choosing to follow Christ really does mean leaving everything behind and risking death. Many of us will never have to go through such an extreme to follow Christ, but we all should be willing to. For those that actually have, how wonderful for them to have such a great proof of their faith for themselves -- and how wonderful their stories are to inspire us believers who have it so much easier comparatively.
Grace and Peace
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