More Than Just Saying

I can't believe that I'm blogging right now. I have an exam at 3:00 and should be studying, but the more I study the more nervous I get. So, I'm going to talk and think about someone that I want to think about... God. I've not blogged in eight days anyway so I need to get on here. 

Well, I was watching a video of Francis Chan (author of two amazing books, Crazy Love and Forgotten God) last night (when I should have been studying ;)). He was talking on the simple topic of "following Jesus." He was talking about how in the church we "follow" differently than we would anywhere else in the world. As a kid it was easy. We played "follow the leader." It was simple, you just did exactly as the leader did. Well, now in the church we've come to this point where we often say, even if we don't out loud, "I'm following Him in my heart." What if a kid was sitting by the side and said, "Yeah, I know it looks like I'm not following, but I'm following in my heart." Francis said that we wouldn't tell a child of ours to go clean their room and allow them to come back and say, "Hey! I memorized what you told me to do. You said, 'go clean your room.' Oh and by the way mom/dad, my friends and I are going to have a study every week on what it would look like if we cleaned our rooms!" That would be absurd. The parent just wants to kid to DO IT. It's great to memorize it and talk about it, but it is most important that they do it.

Aren't we like that as believers? We talk about serving and following Jesus. We tell people that we follow Jesus. But then when people look at the "room" (our lives), they see a contradiction to what we say. Jesus said in Matthew 15:8-9, “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’" It's easy to talk, but it is hard to live that talk. Christianity is hard. Not the watered down Americanized version, but early Church Christianity is hard. The American version is "going to church," the early Church version is "being the church." I believe that some churches are starting to see that following Jesus is more than singing a few songs on Sunday and listening to the preacher preach for 40 minutes. Being a Christian means everything we do is to bring honor to Jesus... Monday through Sunday. 

I love what Chip Ingram once said, "If you are really born again, then nothing should have to prod you to act like a believer. You can tell if you're really "saved" by whether His commands are burdensome." 

Following Jesus is not that complicated. I'll use the Nike logo: