What Are We Living For?

Holiness is a realignment of or priorities and motives. According to John Wesley it is God's love perfected within us. It is the desire to love God above all else and our neighbor as ourselves. It is the same self-sacrificing love that Jesus Christ showed when He died on the cross to save us from (notice, I did not say "in") our sins. This is why Scripture teaches us to be like Christ. He came to emody holiness. He died so that we could also live such a life. So that we could live to serve our God. So that the greatest among us would be servants of the Almighty.

All of this brings us to a question that was asked by Leonard Ravenhill. In fact, the question was written on his tombstone. Even in death he challenges us by asking, "Are the things you are living for worth Christ dying for?" Every once in awhile this question will pop into my mind and haunt me for weeks. Not because I doubt that I am living for God, but because I wonder if we - as the church - are living for God. We spend hours and days and even years dealing with our thoughts (not that those are bad) and ideas while teaching holiness - a complete surrender to God.

I have no doubt that there are people who are living holy lives. I've witnessed it. Holiness, however, is a way of living. It is not a static characteristic. It is shown in the way that we interact with one another. It is shown in the things that we are "living for." How often do we get caught up in ourselves, and our ideas, and our wants and desires and forget what we are living for? Sometimes we seem to be reminded that our lives are not our own. If we are to be holy, we must be "sold out" to God. He must be the one for whom we live. I'll leave you to spend some time considering Ravenhill's question:

Are the things you are living for worth Christ dying for?

Proactive Faith

I keep hearing about Christians who are "turning people away" by "ramming Scripture down their throats." I'm told that they are overwhelming people with their zeal and passion about spreading the gospel, and many people take it the wrong way. There's just one thing that bothers me about these discussions, and the accusations about Christians that result. WHERE ARE THESE CHRISTIANS??? I read about them in books, I hear about them on tv, and people talk about them in small groups. Be honest, have you ever really met someone whose witness was just overpowering? I'm 28 years old, and in my lifetime I have only ever seen one person standing on a street corner yelling at people to repent (and I do admire his zeal and determination). I'm beginning to think that these people are nothing more than a figment of someone's imagination. The "seeker-sensitive" movement, and the emergent church want nothing more than for us to take away the offense of the gospel, so they made up a scapegoat to get us to change. They tell us about the masses of people that are "turned off" when we tell them that they need to get saved.

Let's consider some facts. 1) We have become so weak in our stand for the truth that most people are never "turned on" in the first place. We'd hate to make someone think that we're "too radical." I think our problem is that there AREN'T ENOUGH radical Christians. I am in no way promoting violence. That is not what it is to be a Christian. I mean that we need people who will live the word of God and the love of Christ with reckless abandon.

2) We have become very reactive rather than proactive in our faith. I was sitting in a conference a couple of weeks ago (it was a great conference) listening to people discuss the beliefs of the emergent church. I thought to myself, "here we are reacting to their false teachings. If we had been proactive with the truth for the last 30 years people would know that this stuff is wrong, and we wouldn't be in this position." People are being taken by false doctrine with each passing day. People cease to recognize the authority of Scripture, or the substitutionary death of Christ. They explain away the miraculous. We hear false teachings and then we respond with the truth. Why don't we simply teach the truth in the first place? As long as we're not hearing false teaching in the public arena we're content with our pop-psychology lessons in place of sermons. It's time that we become proactive with the truth that God has revealed to us.

I say all this to point out the possibility that we need Christians who are willing to preach and teach the truth. Even if it makes sinners uncomfortable. We have sacrificed truth in the name of "love" for far too long. Love is not to keep the truth of God from people. It is to obey the commands of Christ, and live our lives as servants of God, like He was. I don't care if we're in a post-modern/post-Christian culture, or any other type. The truth will still set us free.

Spiritual Disciplines

The church of our day has become very focused on doing good works. The current generation seems to use works as their measuring rod for success within the church (especially those who claim to be "emergent"). There are congregations that cancel Sunday morning services to go do things in their communities, and others who give weekly pep talks on doing good things for people. Don't misunderstand me, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH DOING GOOD THINGS! In fact, the Bible says that we should do good things. However, I'm beginning to get the feeling that we are pursuing good works to the extent that we have devalued spiritual disciplines.

You know what I mean. We will go out of our way to help people do whatever they need done (again, not necessarily bad), but when is the last time you fasted? When is the last time that you took an hour to worship God during the week? When is the last time that you spent an evening in prayer? It is pretty hard to argue that these disciplines are not necessary in our lives. The Bible teaches that there is importance in fasting. Paul said, "Pray without ceasing." Worship is what man was created for.

If the Bible is so clear on the importance of these things, why do our works often take priority? I say all this to make this suggestion. It is good for you to do things to help other people, but if you're doing so many things that you are neglecting spiritual disciplines maybe God does not intend for you to do ALL of those things. Maybe you should narrow it down to some of them. I know people will say, "people keep calling me," or "I can't turn people away." I understand how hard that can be to do, but maybe sometimes the phone needs to ring. Maybe there are times that it is more important for us to spend the time in fasting and prayer, or to spend time in worship than anything else. Maybe the church is not the holy bride that it was called to be because we do not spend the necessary time practicing spiritual discipline.

Just a thought.