Wool Underwear at Jury Duty

Ok, tonight I'm going to offend someone! Yay! Truly, I hope to avoid that completely, but if you are offended by anything in this I do hope it is a holy offense (meaning something that makes you uncomfortable and eventually changes the way we look at life, in Christ). I want to talk about two enemies in our churches. I want to talk about two enemies in our homes and in our everyday lives. I am talking about the enemies of convenience and comfortability.

To start off I will tell you where this is coming from. Sally and I were speaking with someone over the weekend about our call to full time missions. I really do not remember who it was, as we saw a lot of people over the weekend, but as we were talking, the person said something to the effect of, "That is so great and its at a good point in your life. I mean, you guys don't have kids yet and you are still young." Mind you, this person meant well, and I don't even know if it came out right, but what they said really stuck with me. We are a people of Christian convenience, Sally and I included. What the person said above was a very sweet thought of, "wow God called you while it was still convenient for you guys." Wrong. No he didn't! Yes, it was convenient for us in our sense of the word, but God doesn't call us in convenience. God doesn't even have convenience in accordance with his will, because with God's will the time it was set to happen is always the time its going to happen. Convenience is man-made. God calls us when God is ready. God called us at the only time God was ever going to call us to respond to a lifetime of missions, I believe, since we accepted that call and of course He has complete foreknowledge and knew exactly when we would finally surrender. Therefore, His plan has always been and will always be at the perfect time and place in our lives no matter what our outlook is on the situation.

We revolve around convenience and it's brother comfortability. If its easy for me to do and doesn't take much sacrifice for me or my family, then I am all about it. Take up my time, though, and we gotta problem. That is evident in our churches today as we plan our church calendar around when people will actually show up. Things like football games, school functions, dinner parties, piano lessons, gotta brush my teeth at this time every night, (and on and on ....) take up our time during the week and then we let God have whatever is left, if there is anything. I'm here to tell you that this is not the original plan that Christ came to tell us about. When I think of Christ I think of reckless abandon. RECKLESS ABANDON!!! A love for our Savior and a love for our God that says, "I'll give you EVERYTHING!" Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." Hear that? We don't get Saturday off. "Daily", he says.

The key phrase in that statement by Christ is 'he must deny himself'. What does it mean to deny oneself? I think of it as putting ourselves last. So God comes first, then others, then ourselves. That is a very simplified list of denial. Now the tough part is that the second group in line still comes after God. Yes, that means your family too. Jesus tells us to love Him so much that it is like we hate our family members. He doesn't say hate them, but that the love we have for Him has to be so great that it pales in comparison with those we love on earth. Therefore, sometimes we even have to deny our families things for the sake of doing God's work. You say, "Brandon, surely God wouldn't put me in that position." Wrong. Ask Abraham.

I whined today at church because of how hot it was in the sanctuary. Yep, people are dying from dehydration due to lack of good water. Freaking, WATER!!!, and I'm whining because it was 78 in the sanctuary. We sure live in a comfortable society. So does God call us to live comfortable lives and coast on through? Nah. Jesus sends us out as sheep among wolves. Comforting, right? He says not to worry about man because all they can do is kill you. Whew, that's all? These are not comforting statements unless we are recklessly abandoned to Christ. Christ did not call us to be comfortable. He just said to follow.

Let's step out as a church and get uncomfortable. Let's talk to people about our faith (God knows I need help with that). We struggle to talk to people about Jesus. I know this because I struggle a lot with it. Man, I can invite them to functions and dinners at church, but talk to them about the Savior of mankind and I clam up. Guess what, Jesus never said invite people to church. I'm not saying that we shouldn't (please don't hear me saying that). I'm saying that WE were meant to share the Gospel with others. We think, well that's my pastor's job. Wrong. It's ours. If we are going to believe what the Bible tells us and follow our God then we are going to be uncomfortable and inconvenienced. It will be like wearing wool underwear at jury duty.


Love you all,
Brandon