Many of you know that I often challenge the way we, myself included, believe and serve God, Christ Jesus. Well let me “Stimulate” your thinking for a minute.

In reading the Bible (the version is not of importance) we see that the Christ we read about ask us to give up everything we have to follow Him. Pretty simple in reading, hard to do in reality to say the least.  I have been reading the book “RADICAL” by David Platt, it has brought some realities to life that I feel we often over look when it comes to following Christ Jesus, the Christ that we read of in the Gospels.

I struggle with the fact we, speaking of American “Christians”, think that we over look the “REAL CHRIST” of the Bible and make Him be what fits us. If we were to do as Christ ask of us, what would that really look like?

I know that many here in the states don’t want a relationship with Christ like He ask of us, it’s too much work. We are a nation that wants for everything to be done for us. We don’t want to work and do, we want “OUR small groups ready for us so all we have to do is come in and be “FED”.

Let me ask this question. “If we were to come face to face with a dangerous reality of having to give up everything for God, would you?’

I don’t think so, I think we don’t want to believe that Christ really wants us to give up everything for Him, to serve Him. I think that almost everyone who claims Christ does not believe that Jesus literally means that we should give up or sell everything.  I believe that we, as David Platt states in his book, “have started re-defining Christianity.  We are giving into the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist Him into a version we are more comfortable with.  A nice middle class American Jesus, a Jesus Who doesn’t mind materialism and never calls us to give away anything we have”.

Which Christ do you follow??

In Christ,

Pastor  Ernie