What does it mean to follow Jesus? I don't want cookie cutter answers, but really...why did he say to count the cost. We're called to "pick up our cross daily", and to be willing to forsake everything, family, friends, belongings, and even our own lives. But is this type of faith practical? Does God have a place in our every day lives? To what extent are we new creations? We live as though Christ is the icing on the cake, he makes everything good but he isn't relevant to much of our lives. Faith is not something we go to when things get hard, and Christ isn't a person who only makes us good people. Faith is something that should be as visibly necessary to us as oxygen, and Christ should be someone who radically transform our thought and every aspect of our life. The way we approach relationships, business, politics, our entire worldview and everything that motivates us should be permeated with Christ! If you can make any decision without considering Christ then he is not you're life yet. There should be nothing that Christ does not influence about us, but yet Christ has a small corner of our life. He may be useful in morals and ethics, but not much more in our practical lives...how is this picking up our cross, how is this forsaking all, how is this a new creation?
Maybe I'll have more developed thoughts later.
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1 comment:
Reading this made me think a lot of Romans 7:6 "we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter." Also 7:15 :For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice;but what I hate, that I do."
And the question still remains, how do the two work together in our lives to live no compromsie completely Christ led and saturated lives. When I think on this the one thing I go back to is my concious, and how the spirit works within our "consious" to convict us. When there is no conviction over sin, the heart's full of scraps fromt he floor instead of having feasted at the table of the king (i think jp said this somewhere). When you think of the most incredibly disciplined Christian leaders of all times like Edwards, and missionaries throughout all history, their day began, continued, and ended feasting on the word and in prayer. We have so much "filler" and we are so much like the world ourselves that we choose the counterfit because its easier to access and it sure doesnt cost us anything right now. Challenging and thought provoking post, thanks for that.
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