The first Adam sinned and left all humanity holding the goods. The last Adam replaces the old legacy with a whopper of a shift; and what a shift it is. God has rewired our entire earlier Adam systems to ultimately find the most amazing, quite fascinating life. The retooling, though, insists abundant life be truly found in daily death. We hedge on this one. We tend to want our way.
It must be true for the most of us that dying to self has to be re-reintroduced to our thought processes as our hearts drift quickly to find narrow escape. We don't want to die to ourselves. We just want to rehearse the call to do it. From the nearby stands, we admire his battle.....to the end....on the cross. We'll sing a song about it on more than one occasion.
The church seems bent on rushing to substitutional systems where the talk seems serious; but the action is far from sacrificial. Such a statement is not intended to be critical of a branch of us or of an odd offshoot from us. It is geared to awaken me/us to the constant need to live like Jesus. We tend to want our way.
While our divided camps convince themselves they are winning arguments against ourselves, we are collectively losing the war. Soldiers have been replaced by campaigners. We have traded the voice of prophets for the evaluation of therapists. Visionaries have been replaced by casual sight-seers. We've become more expectant to have our needs met and less inclined to have our skills stretched. Comfort in one-size-fits-all is happily accepted over individual challenge to risk when there seems to be no hope in hoping.
I believe it is a scary thing to be linked to our Man whom the unbelieving world marks as their most unpopular villain. Jesus remains the scandal of life. We wear him as our own armor. We haven't been called to march in the band. We have volunteered to steady the troops as we continue to find ourselves entangled in a serious war far more conflicting and confusing than what we see in earthly Iraq.
On occasion we have gusts of conviction to surrender upon our own cross. Such is very needed...now. May we bolster our courage to stand for the things which matter, die for the things which respond to His higher calling, and experience the abundant life in the process.
2 comments:
Wow!
I like what Pat Pugh told our kids at Bible Camp because it also applies to all of us in the church, especially church leaders. In one of his lesson where he was getting fired (as you do as well) up he told our teens, “If someone asks you to go get drunk, tell them “Jesus.” If someone says, “Hey, lets smoke a joint.” Answer, “Jesus.” If someone says, “Have sex with me.” Answer, “Jesus.” If they keep asking you keep saying “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.””
Since that time I’ve heard conversations where one of our teens will answer, “Jesus.” We in church leadership when and if we need to discuss an issue should always say to ourselves, “Jesus.” I can only imagine how much less “friendly fire” would have been caused by sometimes well meaning but misguided church leaders if they had been saying “Jesus” over and over again in their minds.
Seems to me Paul said in Philippians, “Let your attitude be like Christ.”
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