Some of my friends think I’m crazy. There are family members who believe I’m over the top. I get it. Right now, being a Christian isn’t the hottest thing to be. In our attempts to reflect a perfect God, we as the church have perfectly and inevitably failed. Because of this broken world that you and I live in, the pain surrounding us, and the sin within us, there seems to be nothing which can change the course our world is headed in. However, I have hope.
As a follower of Jesus, I’d like to give a short summary of why I think it’s worth the loss to follow Jesus.
Easy Life
Despite what the Instagram and Facebook posts tell you, Christians are actually normal people. No superpowers. No magic. We are people who struggle and sin, laugh and cry, eat and drink. We are no higher than the man on the corners of Washington, D.C. asking for change. Yet we are no lower than the man in The White House.
People look at our lives and see them as “worry-free” or “easy.” Coming from a divorced family, who lost everything in 2005, where I had to watch my mother work two jobs to keep our electricity on, this doesn’t sit well with me. My fraternity jokes that people think Christianity is all rainbows and lollipops, when in reality it looks like me making a very important decision every moment: to let God call the shots in my life versus controlling it myself. Like everyone else, I attempt to control my own life at times and be my own god. This almost always ends in people around me or myself, being hurt.
I know God loves me and that His Word is for my joy and His glory, I often forget this truth. My brain and heart are wired for wickedness. There is a constant tug-of-war that will go on until the day I see my Savior. There is a type of grain I will have to go against until I am finally sanctified. Until these moments arrive, Christians understand we are aliens in a place which will only provide glimpses of what our true home is like. Along with everything else that we face on earth, dying to ourselves is exactly what it means. The Christian life is a death sentence.
Wasting Life
“Well, that’s a total bummer. I thought you guys had it easy! This honestly sounds like a waste of time.”
It does sound like a waste of time. Here are a group of normal people, who choose not to take pleasure in sex and every other desire one could possibly act upon, submit their will to an invisible God, who apparently sent His Son to die for their sins and then He becomes a zombie?
Sounds about right. There’s also a part where we become zombies one day, too.
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)
Life may look better on another side but, it’s deceiving, to say the least. If I believe that heaven is my home, where my desires are truly met, then this world will only be a letdown. To turn to God, I must be turning away from something. Due to this reality, there will be things I cannot take part in, hard places that I am called to go, and people who may hate me for following Christ and speaking the good news.
Beauty
Following Jesus isn’t easy. Jesus makes sure to tell His disciples the cost of following Him.
And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? (Luke 9:23-25)
The term “Christian” was originally created as a derogatory term, nothing pretty. It’s root meaning is “little Christ.” It was used to identify those belonging to “The Way,” which was Jesus’ definition for who He is which is stated in John 14:6. At the end of that verse, He says that “no one can come to the Father except through me.” Jesus saves.
Chronologically, this is how God saves us: creation, fall of man, redemption through Christ, and restoration. Being on leadership for a Christian camp, while we interviewed candidates for counselor positions, we asked them to explain the gospel to us (so we are sure they can walk through it with campers who need it). No one’s perfect in presenting anything; there’s always things which can be explained more thoroughly or more concise. Our leadership team noticed many of the counselor hopefuls missed the “restoration” part of the gospel.
Why is that important to hit on? All of the work has been done by Jesus and we are in God’s family. We are good to go, right?
I think we are all prone to forget “restoration.” It doesn’t take much living to see that we are still physically unattended to by God at the moment. Death is still among us, sin is still prominent, pain is still ravaging the world. Thankfully, for those who put their trust in Jesus, this will age will come to an end when He returns! Things will be “restored” to what they once were before we ever believed any lie of Satan. We will have all that we ever need, because we will have the Lord, face-to-face. And the result will be nothing short of beautiful. John, tells us in unexplainable joy, that
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”(Revelation 21:4)
Why is Jesus worth following? Because, while I may never have enough according to the world’s standards and though while my life will never be easy due to consistently “dying” to my desires, the beauty of it all is that I now have life. I have found true treasure in Jesus! C.S. Lewis’ words encourage and remind me of this reality when life gets noisy: “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. (Matthew 13:44)
mitchjay 