Uncomfortable

I think all followers of Christ would agree that at times, and specifically at some points in the Bible, God calls us/commands us to do certain things. Some examples: Love each other as God has loved us (John 15:12); Let your light shine for others to see (Matthew 5:16); Obey your parents in the Lord (Ephesians 6:1). They are everywhere - more than 680 commands in just the New Testament alone (source). But there is one command that is more highly regarded than the rest: many of you may know it as the Great Commission. This passage is at the end of the Gospel of Matthew:

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age" (Matthew 28:18-20).


This is God's greatest command to us besides loving Him with all of our heart and accepting Christ as our Savior. This is our call to action - this is what we are here for, plain and simple. We are called to go and make disciples of the Lord. Let's address a few questions here...the first of which is:

Why would God command us to do this? Why us? 

The answer is simple: we are the only way! We are the only way in which the Gospel can be communicated verbally. Ultimately, it is an individual's personal choice as to whether or not they want to accept the love of Christ - we can't force anyone to do it, or it won't be an actual acceptance of His Love, but rather a reluctant one. People can read the Bible and find the Gospel in it of course, but the only way someone can hear about it is for someone else to tell them about it! There are millions of people all over the world that have never heard the Gospel - never even heard of Christ, period. Some of that is out of our control...we only have a certain amount of funds that will allow us to travel to different parts of the world and reach these unreached people groups. But what we DO have is people all around us who do not know the Lord. Many, if not most, have at least heard of Christ and heard about what it means to have a relationship with God. We are called to make disciples of all nations - that includes our own!

Who are we to share with? Do we have to go to a third-world country to reach people?


As I just stated in the last paragraph, we are called to share with all people, including the people around us. So although it is awesome and really important to do missions work outside of our state/the US, we have people that we can minister to right here in our own city (unless you live in a perfect, holy city where everyone loves and obeys the Lord, then of course this doesn't apply to you). There are always people we can share Christ with, just look around you! One problem you can run into: as you get further along in your walk you may start to surround yourself with Christians more and more. This is a good thing, but if you are only hanging out with people who know God then you are cutting yourself short of opportunities to share God with people who don't know Him! Try to reach out to others who don't have a personal relationship with the Lord, but remember to share Christ with Christians too! We all need Him, and need to be reminded daily of all that He has done for us. And now...for the big, uncomfortable question:

How do we share Christ with others? How do we share Him with others without sounding self-righteous or up in someone's face?


One of the main criticisms from the secular world to the Christian world is that we are too up in people's faces and too self-righteous when we try to spread the Gospel and share the love of Christ. Unfortunately, this is true in many instances. Case in point: Brickyard preachers at NC State, pit preachers at UNC. This is so sad, because this is not how we are to spread the Gospel. The Bible teaches us that pride is the root of all sin - we are to conduct ourselves in the most humble manner possible. Christ was the perfect example of this - He was God and perfect, and yet came down to Earth as a human and lived a life of a servant to us - washed His disciples' feet with His own hair, healed the sick, caused the blind to see. He humbled Himself to serve us...and ultimately paid the greatest sacrifice with His life. To properly spread the Gospel, we must approach it with as much humility as possible. The first step to doing this is pray for it. And then pray for it again. And then pray about it some more. Pray that the Lord will give us a servant's humble heart. Another key to this is to go outside of our comfort zone (hence the title)! Sharing the Gospel is not a naturally comfortable thing to us. Christians can often be looked down on when trying to spread the Gospel. But at some point, we have to stop caring so much about what people think of us and our comfort level, and more about the urgent issue that is people hearing of God! Does this mean you should be extra-super bold and go out and start screaming Scripture and declaring that Jesus is Lord? Absolutely not. Some people take this too far, and that's when pride starts to set in and change the motive. Our motive should be one: To make Christ and what He did for us famous. He deserves all of the glory for our spreading of the Gospel, it should never come back to us. However, we have to have a willing heart to follow His commandments.
      So I encourage you to share Christ with someone who doesn't know Him: this can be through your actions or your words, but at some point you are going to have to verbally speak the Gospel. This may not be comfortable for you at first: that is ok! Just like anything else, effectively communicating the Gospel takes practice. One way you can practice is to talk to another believer about Christ  - in other words, share the Gospel with someone who already knows it. They can help you get more comfortable with it. Once again, however, I want to make sure you know that the key here is to be humble, and not over-zealous with your actions.
     He has given us so much through everything we have in our lives - why would we not in turn want to give that to others? Share with others the greatest gift you have been given: true, eternal life in Christ. This is how we serve the Lord - by stepping out of our comfort zone and communicating God's great love for us!


Lord,
      Help us be strong in our faith to You. We know that we need You like we need the air to breathe - that same air that You freely gave us. Thank You for everything that You are and for the work that You have already done for us. Thank You for Your commandments and for Your calling us to go and make disciples. Help us to be humble and give You the glory for our successes and failures. Thank You for the work that You are doing in our hearts and in the hearts of our brothers and sisters. Help us to step outside of our comfort zones and spread Your Gospel. Amen.

Baptism

Before I get started....

Let me first apologize for the long delay between posts. Life has been a bit crazy in the last month and a half, with moving in, school starting up again, and now a test every week it seems. Although this is not a good excuse for not throwing down the occasional blog or two. I have had some very bloggable thoughts in that period though, yet have not delivered. I know, so un-clutch...so I may end up blogging at a decent rate here in the next few weeks as I gather those thoughts and convert them into blog form, so keep your eyes peeled!

So, about that title...

Baptism is, until very recently, something that I did not really understand, nor consider as significant as I should have been considered it. Baptism, by pure definition, is the public profession of one's faith and commitment to the Lord. It is also one's acknowledgment and recognition of what Jesus did for us on the cross and in His life - that He lived the perfect life we were supposed to live, and died a sinner's death on the cross in our place. The work has already been done for us on the cross - baptism is the displaying of our acceptance of that work. Sometimes as a Christian it can be hard not to think that we have a checklist of things we need to do for the Lord. That we have a ton of work we are obligated to do, to further the Kingdom of God. Christ has already come here and done the work for us, He has made it easy! We as Christians are so overjoyed and thankful for what He has done that we couldn't imagine our response being anything but absolute servitude and submission to the Lord. But we are sinful, and so very far from perfect, and so we struggle with the "absolute" part mentioned in that last sentence. So to tie that together, baptism isn't something that we have to do for the Lord, but in reality a response for what He has done for us!

I was baptized as an infant at my church in Nashville, Tennessee. I remember it very clearly....no, of course that is not true, I do not remember it at all. But didn't I just say that I have the understanding that baptism is a public profession of one's faith, and a profession to the Lord that we accept what He has done for us and want to make it known to our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ? But alas! I was baptized last week, in front of 7,200+ people at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park in Durham, NC, as a part of the Summit Church's "Church at the Ballpark" event! I first accepted Christ into my life and committed my life to serving Him at the age of 16, but it wasn't until the last few months that I considered what it might mean to be baptized.

Do you have to get baptized to be saved? No. The Lord only asks that we accept the love He has given us, and that we understand and recognize that Christ died for our sins, both in the past and future. The baptism, and all of our actions/words, are a response to that beautiful story of sacrifice and new life. We have been resurrected through Christ - our old self is gone, and a new one is born. Baptism is our response and the action that we take to show the Lord that we really are committed to Him and understand these things. The Lord also gave us brothers and sisters in Christ to share His love and to worship with. It is important that we make it public to our friends in Christ that we are willing to make that sort of commitment in front of a bunch of people (in my case, 7,000).

I was not even planning on getting baptized that day. J.D. came on stage and was talking about baptism, and what it means to be baptized, and it honestly just hit me that I really wanted to do it, and felt like I should as a profession of my faith. I was extremely blessed that almost my entire small group and some of my best friends were on hand to witness it, walk me through it, and support me throughout the entire thing. It feels incredible to have been washed in the water - a great representation of Christ washing away my sins with His blood when He took them on the cross for me!

Thank you Lord for the blessing of baptism - that you have provided us with a response to Your great works that we can continue to look back on and reflect on all of the great things You have done for us and will continue to do. Thank you for loving friends and family that support us in our relationship with You, and encourage us in our faith. Thank you for Your cross, Your Word, and all that You have given us. Amen.

Fairness.

Stop me if this sounds familiar:

"But mom, how come I can't go with my friends?"
"Because I said so!"
"But that's not fair!"
"Life is not fair!"

...Ok, so I know, you can't stop me, I'm writing a blog :) But you understand what I mean: We are all, at some point, under the impression that life is just not fair. There are terrible people in the world, terrible things happen, and not everything happens as we think it should. Quite simply, life really isn't fair. But what if it was? Let's think about this in a Kingdom sense (and when I say Kingdom sense, I am talking about the Kingdom of God, this world that He has given us in which to live and spread His love). IF life were fair, and God just gave us what we deserve, and everything was equal fairness between Him and us...

We would not go to heaven
We would not be able to interact with the Lord like we do
God would punish us like we deserve - which would not be fun, to say the least
There would be no grace to cover our sins
There would be no mercy to forgive us for when we do not do what God wants

and the biggest kicker, the one that assures us that God treating us unfairly is certainly the best:

Jesus would not have come down from Heaven, not have ever lived, not have performed miracles, not have taught us so much of what we know and model our lives after, and would not have died on the cross for our sins.


On the cross, our sin, all of our sin, the thing that separates us from God, was transferred to Christ

.....This is as unfair as it gets!!!


It is absolutely not fair for someone so perfect, God's only son, to come to earth and die a sinner's, criminal's death! Christ did nothing wrong in His entire life - all he died was preach truth and perform miracles - yet he died on the cross for us: It was unfair for Him to take our sins.

So the next time you catch yourself saying, "Life is not fair!" or hear someone else say it, just send a quick prayer up to Heaven and say, "Lord, thank you so much that life is not fair! I am so thankful that you love me so much that you sent your own Son to die for my sins, and gave me a medium to speak to You and worship You through Your Son."

Simplicity.

“It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things are not simple. They look simple, but they are not. The table I am sitting at looks simple; but ask a scientist to tell you what it is really made of – all about the atoms and how the light waves rebound from them and hit my eye and what they do to the optic nerve and what it does to my brain – and, of course, you find that what we call ‘seeing a table’ lands you in mysteries and complications which you can hardly get to the end of. A child saying a child’s prayer looks simple. And if you are content to stop there, well and good. But if you are not – and the modern world usually is not – if you want to go on and ask what is really happening – then you must be prepared for something difficult. If we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something more is not simple.” – C.S. Lewis

This is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of C. S. Lewis’s masterful and influential book, Mere Christianity. This book is full of wisdom and teachings of the Christian life at its very core, starting with the simplest concepts and building to tougher ones, such as sexuality, marriage, and death. Which brings us to the word “simple”, and what it actually might mean in both this context and the context of the passage above. Is Christianity a “simple” religion? Do you agree or disagree with this passage? I find that the answer to the first question is both yes and no. Christianity, at its very deepest core, is quite simple: God loves you, and He is perfect. You are not perfect. However, you were designed in the image of God, who is perfect. You are separated from God because of sin – but He sent His only Son, His only Son that quite literally was imself, to die for your sins. The blood He shed for you covers your sins, and if you accept Him you will receive His grace and mercy. This is rather simple – this God loves you, and wants a personal relationship with you, and all you have to do is accept Him. That’s it. Seriously. But there is so much more to this faith. I struggle here to not say religion, as I have been taught my whole life to use that word. But that is not what it is. It is not a “thing,” it is a relationship. It is in this blog that I will attempt to go beyond the simple concepts of this relationship between us – God’s chosen people, those who call ourselves Christians – and the Lord. We glance at Christianity and we see the simple concepts, but as we dive deeper and deeper into the Word that the Lord has provided, the Bible, we see that it is so much more than just the deepest, most pure love we can ever imagine. And as for the word “difficult” in the passage above, that is certainly a relative term. God’s way is not always the easy way – in fact, I have found in my experiences that much of the time it is not. But by taking God’s way, and accepting His help, we grow more than we could have ever imagined, and certainly more than we could have grown on our own. He has revealed to us His perfect character – and therefore His perfect hope (see Romans 5:1-5). He has instructed us in how to live, how to treat others, how to love, how to prepare for marriage, how to deal with our enemies, and so much more. 


I invite you to follow along with me in this blog as we take a look at these things. I hope to be posting on a fairly regular basis. Please feel free to leave any comments and discussion, and if you would like to personally communicate with me about anything you see on here or anything in general, please do not hesitate to contact me at bradleyjohnson91@gmail.com, or @bjohnson91 on twitter!

“Lord, help us to relentlessly follow You and obey You in all that we do. It is through you that we find our life, hope and deliverance. We love you, and want to serve you, because we know that You alone are worthy. Thank you for the countless blessings you have given us, and may we continue to find peace in You and develop a closer, more intimate relationship with You. Amen.”