Hope In Love

What if Jesus really meant what he said to the rich young man when he told him to “go sell all his posessions, give the money to the poor, and come follow me”.  That’s the question Shane Clairborn asks in his book “Irresistible Revolution”.   It was probably one of the scariest books I’ve ever read.  Made me think about my walk with Christ.  Made me want to be a follower of Christ.  Now I’m not saying I’m gonna sell all my posessions (not that I have a lot of them anyway) and be poor, but it means letting the things that break God’s heart break mine.  Jesus wasn’t too concerned with the rich and religious people of his day – I mean he did want them to see the light of course, but his main purpose is seen in the people he chose to reside with, the broken, poor, and untouchables.  The people society had rejected.  As he said, its the sick that need a doctor not those that think they are healthy. 

Jesus could have chose to come into this world into a royal family – and maybe more people would have been his followers then (no matter how shallow their following would be) but he chose to come into the world in a manger as the son of a carpenter and become homeless with “no place to rest his head”.  Makes you think…

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We live in plenty.  There’s more than enough for what the world needs but not for our greed. –quote from Mother Theresa paraphrased by John Ellis in the song Revolution (Sunday, Tree63 – and by the way that is my favorite band if you ever feel like giving me a little prezzie).
 
What would the world look like if we all unselfishly shared what we had with our neighbor?  This is what the early church was all about.  This thought kinda follows on my train of thought on living in community – real ubuntu, or at least my understanding of it.  It looks really beautiful in my head.

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Matther 25: 34 – 36 and 40 gives us a very practical way to live church and to live all out for Christ.   Isaiah 58: 6 – 8 tells us how to let our lights shine before all men that they may see our good works and praise our Father in heaven.

I have fallen in love with 2 songs that talk about this topic – I’ll just give you a little taste.

hosanna by Hillsong

search my heart and make it clean
open up my eyes to the things unseen
show me how to love like you have loved me
break my heart for what breaks yours
everthing i am for your kingdom’s cause
as i walk from earth into eternity

God of Justice (we must go) by Tim Hughes

freely we’ve recieved now freely we will give
we must go live to feed the hungry stand beside the broken
we must go stepping forward keep up from just singing
move us into action, we must go

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I had a revelation the other day – thanks to a friend of mine (Josh Ratiani).  For a while my mindset was, live all out for Christ cos if you do then you’ll be covered even if Christianity turns out to be a hoax.  Think about it: you’ll be ok with Allah cos you’re a good person, you’ll get to come back as something really good cos you’ll have good karma build up if bhuddism turns out to be true, etc.  Here’s the revelation: live so all out for Jesus that if you were to die and find out its all a lie you would want a do over.  Paul says we should live our lives so much for Christ that if Christianity is a hoax we should be pitied above all others.  In a sense we should live our lives so all out for Christ that even if we are good with Allah, we should look back and say “dude, in that time I was serving JC, I could have [fill in whatever here]“.  So that’s my goal: to let my light shine, to do for the least of these, and to recklessly abandon my life to him.

I am gonna need lots of prayer.

The link, by the way, leads you to Josh’s blog.  If you have questions on the topic of “God of Justice” I would refer you to him cos that is his passion so i’m sure he’ll have something to say on it.  He has unknowingly been instrumental in my spiritual growth in the last year and 4 months that I’ve known him.  So yea, even though he’s not gonna read this: thanx Josh.