follower of jesus

What If?

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 2 Comments

I got to thinking today about being radical. I know it gets painted with a bad brush because of how many are radical in wrong and harmful ways, but what if we were known as radical Christ-followers?

What if we really did love each other deeply and compassionately just as Christ loved us, not just in words and promises, but in actions and random acts of kindness and blessing toward each other daily?

What if we decided that a tithe wasn’t enough and gave everything– not just our money and possessions, but our futures, our dreams, our goals, our lives, and even our bodies– to Jesus for Him to use in whatever way He saw fit?

What if we put down the picket signs and walked across the line to love those people we don’t agree with and show them the real Jesus who ate and drank and hung out with tax-collectors, outcasts, and whores and show them His radical love for them?

What if we stopped trying to take back a country and started trying to advance a Kingdom and to tell the world that the rightful King is coming to make every wrong right again?

What if instead of expecting sinners to confess to us, we confessed to them that we haven’t always preached and taught and lived the grace that can save them and we’ve missed it when it comes to being what Jesus was about– loving the least of these that no one else will love and being Jesus to them?

What if we actually lived out the Bible– all of it, and not just the parts that we like and make us feel comfortable and superior and holier-than-thou– and were doers and not only hearers of God’s Word?

What if we made today Day 1 of Year 1 of the new beginning of a new kind of follower of Jesus who knows he’s broken but knows that He’s been shown incredible grace and lives out the Love that overcomes hate, fear, sin, death, and the grave?

 

What’s It Worth to You?

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I had some hard questions that smacked me upside the head today. Questions like these:

What in my life am I so passionate about that I would sacrifice everything else for?

Is what I believe just mental assent or does it a actually change the way I live?

Am I a follower when it’s convenient or will I still follow even when it costs me something?

Do those I work with know that I’m a follower of Jesus and could they see the way I act and speak and be able to tell a difference?

Am I following Jesus as a means to my own goals and dreams or for the sake of knowing and becoming more like Him?

Can I be okay with living in limbo with unanswered questions and unfulfilled desires and silences from God?

When Monday and the week start all over again, will I be willing to pick up my cross and carry it and follow Jesus no matter what?

Those are some questions that are haunting me right now. In my own strength I could only say no, but with God’s help and strength and Jesus in me, I am finally and firmly able to offer up an absolute yes.

In my own power I will choose ease and comfort and me every time, but in the power of the risen Christ, I can choose sacrifice and picking up my cross and, ultimately, to be a vessel through which Jesus can tangibly love the world.

May the same be said of each of you.

Feelin’ the Love

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I know Facebook can at times be a complete waste of time. I myself have spent too much time in the past growing virtual crops and selling virtual pigs and cows for (unfortunately) virtual profit. But on my birthday, Facebook shows its usefulness. I love each and every time I get a post wishing me a happy birthday. Every one makes me smile and makes my day.

Tonight, at Chick-fil-A, my birthday cake was a brownie with a lit match stuck in it. I loved it. I was feeling the love.

But what about all those facebook friends who didn’t send me birthday greetings? What about all those people out there who aren’t as easy to love? Those who are too broken to love back at all?

If you only are friends with those who friend you back, that’s expected. If you only love those who love you back, there’s nothing special about that. Even those who believe in nothing do that.

But when you love the unloveable, the unloved, and the loveless, you show yourself to be a true follower of Jesus. When you are friends with those people who are outcasts and uncool and misfits, you are loving with the love of Jesus.

When a husband loves his wife because she loves him back or when a friend loves another friend because of what the second friend does for the first, that’s not really love. That’s a contract. You do for me, I do for you. Love is a covenant.

Jesus loved us when we were outcasts, strangers from the Promise, without hope, alienated from God, and broken beyond repair. He didn’t wait until we loved him to love us; He loved us first. He showed us that His love was strong enough to take the most broken parts and make even those whole again.

We really and truly love not when we love out of a need to be loved or recognized. but when we are complete in Christ and filled with His love and that love spills out onto those around us. We really and truly love when our love isn’t feeling or wishing, but acting for the better of the other. When we do everything in our power, regardless of cost, to help the other person be all that Jesus meant for them to be.

I want to love like that. I hope and pray you do, too. I hope we move beyond love as a feeling and choose to love every day, whether we feel like it or not.

By the way, thanks for all the birthday love. If I knew it would be like this, I’d turn 40 every day.