" If life is a river, then pursuing Christ requires swimming upstream. When we stop swimming or actively following Him, we automatically begin to be swept downstream.
Or, to use another metaphor more familiar to city people, we are on a never-ending downward escalator. In order to grow, we have to turn around and sprint up the escalator, putting up with perturbed looks from everyone else who is gradually moving downward.
I believe much of the American churchgoing population, while not specifically swimming downstream, is slowly floating away from Christ. It isn't a conscious choice, it is nonetheless happening because little in their lives propels them toward Christ.
Perhaps it sounds as though I believe you have to work your way to Jesus. I don't. I fully believe that we are saved by grace, through faith, by the gift of God, and that the true faith manifests itself through our actions. As James writes, "Faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead" (2:17). The lives of many people who call themselves "Christians" in America lack manifestations of a vital and active faith.
And this, to be perfectly honest, frightens me. It keeps me up at night. It causes me to pray desperately and fervently for my congregation, for the groups of people I speak to, and for the church as a whole.
Henri Nouwen writes about this in his book With Open Hands: "It is hard to bear with people who stand still along the way, lose heart, and seek their happiness in little pleasures which they cling to... You feel sad about all that self-indulgence and self-satisfaction, for you know with an indestructible certainty that something greater is coming..."
How many of us would really leave our families, our jobs, our education, our friends, our connections, our familiar surroundings, and our homes if Jesus asked us to? If He just showed up and said, "Follow me"? No explanation. No directions.
You could follow Him straight up a hill to be crucified. Maybe He would lead you to another country, and you would never see your family again. Or perhaps you would stay put, but He would ask you to spend your time helping people who will never love you back and never show gratitude for what you gave up.
Consider this carefully-- have you ever done so? Or was your decision to follow Christ flippant, based solely on feelings and emotion, made without counting the cost?
What scares me the most are the people who are lukewarm and just don't care. I think that if I did a poll of the readers of this book, many of you would say, "Yeah, I am definitely lukewarm at times, but I'm not really at a place to give more to God." Many of us believe we have as much of God as we want right now, a reasonable portion of God among all the other things in our lives. Most of our thoughts are centered on the money we want to make, the school we want to attend, the body we aspire to have, the spouse we want to marry, the kind of person we want to become... But the fact is that nothing should concern us more than our relationship with God; it's about eternity, and nothing compares with that. God is not someone who can be tacked on to our lives.
Remember the visions of John and Isaiah of the throne room of God? Remember the pictures of the galaxies and how tiny we are in comparison? Remember the diversity of God, seen in thousands of species of trees in the rain forest? We say to the Creator of all this magnitude and majesty, "Well, I'm not sure You are worth it... You see, I really like my car, or my little sin habit, or my money, and I'm really not sure I want to give them up, even if it means I get you."
When we put it plainly like this-- as a direct choice between God and our stuff-- most of us hope we would choose God. But we need to realize that how we spend our time, what our money goes toward, and where we will invest our energy is equivalent to choosing God or rejecting Him. How could we think for even a second that something on this puny little earth compares to the Creator and Sustainer and Savior of it all?
We disgust God when we weigh and compare Him against the things of this world. It makes Him sick when we actually decide those things are better than God Himself. We believe we don't need anything Jesus offers, but we fail to realize that slowly, almost imperceptibly, we are drifting downstream. And in the process we are becoming blind, being stripped naked, and turning into impoverished wretches.
..... Are you willing to say to God that He can have whatever He wants? Do you believe that wholehearted commitment to Him is more important than any other thing or person in your life? Do you know that nothing you do in this life will ever matter, unless it is about loving God and loving the people He has made?
If the answer is to those questions is yes, then let your bet match your talk.
True faith means holding nothing back; it bets everything on the hope of eternity. "
~ Francis Chan, "Crazy Love" (pp 95-97)
this hit home for me.
