Is your goal to have a safe life with no dangers? If so, call:
Is Ded-Life for You?
Here at “DedLife of the Cosmos” corporation, your healthcare, insurance, and spa provider, we strive to give our clients the most stress-free lives possible. We provide a full-service package. Never again will you be asked a question, required to make a decision, or be expected to speak to anyone! We even insulate you from the IRS! Our service has been featured innumerable times in every electronic and paper media, including all social media platforms. Surely, you’ve read about us, why else would you be here!
But enough about us, let’s talk about you! What do you think of us?
Are We Living the Wrong Life?
Yes, the above is my sarcastic way of addressing the 800-pound gorilla featured in so many sermons and small-group Christian meetings. Christian publishing companies and magazines can’t churn out “bloodless” Christianity fast enough. And now, these morally bankrupt folks are stripping Christian teaching of such basics as service to Jesus through sacrifice, punishment, and loss of life. What has gotten into us? There is good reason that countries we previously considered “backward” are sending missionaries to America. Praise God for these bold ministers.
More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 5:3-5
In the “Watch What You Pray For” department, notice how Jesus answers prayers for hope! When was the last time that a Christian elder encouraged you to actually suffer loss for Jesus? Have you witnessed a fellow believer who suffered (beaten, loss of employment, their children verbally abused)? I think we are beginning to see some of this in school board meetings. I had the privilege of working with a pastor in another country that was beaten, tortured, put in jail, and suffered the loss of personal items for many years specifically because he was a Christian. We know that the apostle Paul wrote Timothy, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,” (2 Timothy 3:12)
A Life That Pleases Jesus is Dangerous
If our lives do not parallel the lives of Christians before us, then we need to judge ourselves, not our spiritual ancestors. “For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. (2 Peter 2:19)” We often think of “enslavement” to things like alcohol, gambling, sexual sins, greed and so forth. But a Christians can just as easily be enslaved by wasting money, eating too much food, and taking any healthy thing (e.g., jogging, golfing, swimming) and allowing it to control him/her.
Our LBJ (life before Jesus) was founded upon death – have all the fun you can because we’re all going to die. But our LAS (life have salvation) cannot be built upon the foolish idea that we just wait, doing nothing, until Jesus returns, or we die. How crazy is that. What Jesus wants us to do is wade into humanity, so people smell our S.B.O (spiritual body odor).
To the one, we are an odor of death and demise; to the other, a fragrance that brings life. And who is qualified for such a task?
2 Corinthians 2:16
Image by James Chan from Pixabay
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