Trust Me, Follow Me, Love Me, Sacrifice for Me

Trust Me, even if it means becoming homeless (Luke 9:57-58).
Follow Me, even if it means letting someone else bury your dad (Luke 9:60).
Love Me, even if it means not saying good-bye to your family (Luke 9:62).
Sacrifice for Me, even if it means giving up all you have in order to have Christ (Luke 18:22).

Let's put ourselves in the shoes of these followers of Jesus in the first century. What if you were the man Jesus told not to even say good-bye to his family? What if we were told to hate our families and give up everything we had in order to follow Jesus? What if we were told to sell all our possessions in order to give to the poor?

This is where we come face to face with a dangerous reality. We do have to give up everything we have to follow Jesus. We do have to love him in a way that makes our closest relationships in this world look like hate. And it is entirely possible that He will tell any one of us to sell everything we have and give it to the poor.

But we don't want to believe it.

We are afraid of what this might mean for our lives. Se we rationalize these passages away. "Jesus wouldn't really tell us not to bury our father or not to say good-bye to our family. Jesus didn't literally mean to sell all we have and give it to the poor. What Jesus really meant was...."

And this is where we need to pause. We need to pause because we are redefining Christianity according to our preferences. We are giving in to the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and begin twisting Him into a version of Jesus that we are more comfortable with.

A nice, middle-class, American Jesus.

A Jesus who doesn't mind material security and would never call us to give away everything we have.

A Jesus who would not expect us to forsake our closest relationships so that He receives all our affection.

A Jesus who wants us to be balanced, who wants us to avoid dangerous extremes, who for that matter wants us to avoid danger altogether.

A Jesus who is fine with a devotion from us that does not infringe on our comforts, because after all He loves us just the way we are.

But do you and I realize what we are doing at this point? We are molding Jesus into our image and making Him look like us. And the danger now is that when we gather to sing and lift our hands in worship, we are not actually worshiping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead, we are worshiping ourselves.

The Radical Question by David Platt (adapted from the book 'Radical' by the same author)

Things We Set Our Hearts On...

We rarely say, "I am going to set my heart on this thing and let it completely control my life," But that is exactly what happens.
The person you met and mildly enjoyed becomes the person whose approval you cannot live without. The work you undertook to support your family becomes the source of identity and achievement you can't give up. The house you built for the shelter and comfort of your family becomes a temple for the worship of possessions. A rightful attention to your own needs morphs into a self-absorbed existence. Ministry has become more of an opportunity to seek power and approval than a life in the service of God. The things we set our hearts on never remain under our control. Instead, they capture, control, and enslave us. This is the danger of earth-bound treasure.
Every human being is a worshiper, in active pursuit of the thing that rules his heart. This worship shapes everything we do and say, who we are, and how we live. This is why the heart is always to be the target in personal ministry.

Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands by Paul David Tripp

Let us not be wrong...

"We think it is better to tolerate error than to look ugly defending the truth... We can be wrong about many things, but let us not be wrong about false teachers and their doctrines!" 'Who are You to Judge' by Erwin Lutzer

A Comfortable Kind of Christianity...

"We as Christians have settled down to a comfortable kind of christianity that demands very little and therefore, in turn, makes very little difference in the wider culture. When the world takes a step in our direction, we embrace it without a twinge of conscience. But a church that has made its peace with the world is incapable of changing it."
'Who are You to Judge' by Erwin Lutzer