Hope In Love

Take a minute and think of a Christian you know who you would consider really hardcore as a Christian? [time passes]

Okay, time. Who was that person? Was it your pastor or youth leader? Was it a Christian author or celebrity, maybe someone in a band or the leader of your Christian group at school? Maybe it was a wise older person or a person of hectic prayer or someone you’ve seen on TV doing amazing miracles or something like that?

Well let me share the Truth with you on this particular topic… there are two different types of Christian… those who are hardcore, who give their WHOLE lives to God, not just once a week at church or a few minutes a day in quiet time, those who pray believing that something is going to happen and in fact have made prayer (praying continuously) a regular natural part of their day to day lives as they INVITE and INCLUDE and INVOLVE the Holy Spirit in every part of their day and every activity they take part in, those Christian who would be described as revolutionary or radical or world-changing or somehow different to the world…

And the second type of Christian is a figment of your imagination!

Yup, you heard it and this is really a message I believe God has been pressing on my heart the last few weeks. That all of us are called to be NORMAL CHRISTIANS… but that the definition of a normal Christian is someone who is radical and revolutionary and lives a life that is markedly different to the rest of the world. Those are not the marks of a super Christian as we are often led to believe, but what should be evident in the basic package.

ARE YOU NORMAL?

Matthew 7 is a hectic passage that deals with a lot of either/or choices – the wide or the narrow path, lives that produce good fruit or bad fruit, the house built on the rock or the sand… and through each of those (evidenced by the consequences applied to the one not being recommended) Jesus is saying again and again, there is one way of following Me. And it climaxes with that very difficult to hear passage in verse 21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, BUT ONLY HE WHO DOES THE WILL OF MY FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from Me, you evildoers.”

Am I doing the will of the Father in heaven?

Does Jesus KNOW me? Not do I know about Him, but do I know Him? Am I in relationship with Jesus?
‘Cos that is normal Christianity, and when it is lived out it looks radical and hardcore and different because so few people are doing it.
In fact Jesus’ call in Luke 9:23 is ‘If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.’ A normal Christian is someone who gets that it is ALL about Jesus.

Not giving Him one day a week or a few minutes a day.But every part of your life.Every part of every part of your life.

Are you a normal Christian?

As a guy called Keith Green said (go get hold of the book ‘No Compromise’ if you want to be blown away by a life lived after God) ‘It doesn’t take a lot to follow Jesus, just everything.’

I encourage you to go for it. To run the race. To choose this day Who you will serve. To die to yourself and embrace and invite His kingdom. He promises life to the full and if you give yourself completely to Him, that is what you will get. It won’t be boring, that I can promise you. It may also not be easy or comfortable or popular (except to the One who really matters)And so there are two types of Christian… a normal Christian (who is revolutionary, who loves abundantly and crazily, who forgives indiscriminately, who worships whole-heartedly, who cries out in pain and frustration when He doesn’t see or understand God working, who is real) and a non-Christian…

It’s time to be normal. You in?

by Brett “fish” Anderson

copied from blaze magazine