Have I Been Flirting With Jesus?

Here is some INTENSE food for thought that is based off of the Radical series that I am still going through. Let this bring you to your knees, and be fuel for your prayer-life and your thought-life with Jesus. The quotes are mostly David Platt speaking, as well as scripture from the Bible.

The Gospel Demands Radical Sacrifice -- David Platt's Radical Series

I want to avoid getting too specific.

We have created a system of Christianity that consists in a bunch of boxes to check off. The danger is that we hear the words, ‘tell me what to do’, and ‘what am I supposed to do’. We crave boxes and think that ‘if I could just check these off, THEN it will be okay’. That is NOT the point! It misses the point all together.

That’s a Christianity that consists of external regulations that bypass the heart.

God takes the Word, shows us what the Word says, and THAT is the drive that leads us to the spirit of God. It drives you and me to HOURS of wrestling to God in prayer about how this Word applies to us in our lives. If all we do is talk with each other about these things and come up with little boxes to check off – “hey, this is how it looks” – we will miss God’s design for us and His Word. He desires to bring us along with Him and to transform us and to radically change us, our hearts. In a way that will have external ramifications, yes, but is rooted in internal change. We will do everything we can in our Christian culture today to bypass spending the time necessary before God to experience internal change.

"We are about to read tough, difficult, hard words from Jesus. Words that are extremely foreign to our ears, even to our understanding of Christianity. God, we pray that you would expose lies and falsehoods in the way we have approached Christianity. Bring truth to bear on our lives and on your church, and I pray the result would be radical transformation in our lives. We need your spirit to do this work in us. I need your spirit to proclaim it, we need to your spirit to hear it, and we certainly need your spirit to obey it."

"Are you willing to come to Jesus on His terms? The brand of Christianity today that we have adopted operates on coming to Jesus on our own terms. Look at how we describe it and encourage people to come to Christ – we use terms that are foreign to the New Testament. ‘Follow the Roman road to Jesus, believe these 4 spiritual laws, answer these questions right, pray this prayer, raise your hand, sign this card and proclaim your love for Jesus’. He told his followers to do none of these things. 

Luke 14:26- 35. His terms: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. Salt is god, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him listen.”

"Can you imagine standing in that crowd? Who does this guy think he is? So, I’m supposed to hate my mom, dad, brother, sister, wife and children. To pick up an instrument of torture and give up everything I have to follow you? For most of us, Jesus lost us at “hello” in this passage. Scares me to think of how I would respond in the first century to this. Some might think that such words are too hard for us to look into today, or say we don’t need to  look into this, or are we really ready, and mature enough to hear it? This is how Jesus introduced himself. That’s just it. 

This was not Jesus speaking to a "mature crowd" that was ready or needing to go deeper, this was Jesus speaking to people who were initially interested in following him. This was the initial invitation to him. What he said. Elementary/basic truths of what it means to follow him." Wow. 

"How have we gotten to the point where this seems so radical? So foreign—what is that saying to us? About how far we have strayed from what it means to be a follower, a disciple of Christ. How can we even ask the question today, 'well, can you be a believer and not a disciple?'. As if there are levels of Christianity, where first there is a thin one where you believe in Jesus and it doesn’t cost you much, and then those who are interested can go deeper, into a higher, deeper level of Christianity. The New Testament says nothing of this. Not saying that everyone is at the same place in our spiritual maturity, or that when we initially come to Christ, we know everything that we know 20 years later, but the picture is clear.

Jesus says THREE times if you don’t even do these things you can’t even be my disciple. These are the BASIC requirements for discipleship. We’ve been flirting with Jesus on our own terms. Have we ever really come to Jesus on his terms? That’s an important question to ask. This is the sacrifice of Christians – our terms.

1.        
      1. Jesus requires superior love (Luke 14:26). Hate your mother, father, wife, children, etc. What does he mean? I thought we were supposed to love people. How do you hate them and honor them at the same time? There is a dangerous temptation here, for us to try and soften Jesus’ words. To justify the way we live, so I want to be very careful here. Let’s take honest looks to see exactly what he means. 

      Matthew 22: 36 – a teacher in the law asks Jesus a question – “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law?” Jesus replied: ‘‘Love the Lord your God with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul and with ALL your mind.’’ Not even God first, family second, then this person, that person. No! God is ALL. Supreme. Superior. All your affections belong to God. When the love of God is supreme in your life, then the result is love for each other. Love your neighbor. They go together. Love for each other springs from loving God. In Matthew 10:37 Jesus says, “anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” 

      Love for anything and everything else is so far less compared to the supremeness of our love for God, that it looks like hate. This is the context brought into Luke 14. In comparison to Christ, we hate the people we love. This changes our perspective. When love for God is supreme and it captivates our hearts, then the love we show our mom and dad, children, wife…. The love that we extend is really the supreme love that we have for Christ in our lives. Our hearts are conquered by a superior affection in God. 

     We know so little of this kind of love. 

      Do you hear the way we talk? Supposed Christians? I know I need to be in church. Take my kids to church. Read the bible and pray. This is NOT Christianity. Biblical Christianity does NOT consist of grudging obedience to Christ. That is NO WAY TO LOVE. What if my wife came home from work and I greeted her at the door with a kiss on the lips. She then asked, “what’s that for?” Let me at least share with you what my response does not need to be -- “well, it says in page 54 of the marriage manual that that’s what I’m supposed to do”.

      Who ever got the idea that Christianity is begrudging obedience? We need to let go of everything in this world that we love and do the things we don’t wanna do, but we do them anyway to save our own skin. NOT biblical Christianity. Our LOVE for HIM drives everything we do. It changes our perspective on everything in this world. 

        DO YOU LOVE CHRIST? 

        DO YOU WANT CHRIST?   

      Get through the rubbish of go to church, read Bible, pray, teach classes, raising kids right…. Do you? Want him? Love him? Is he the reason you live? The One for who your heart beats? Does your love for Him make any other love look like hate? In our culture today, we idolize our children, and marriages, sex, relationships, parents, families and friends. To the point where Jesus Christ gets the leftovers from our affections and our lives. THAT is “unchristian”. Can’t be his disciple. Forsake all relationships and favor an intimate relationship with him. This is what it means to be a disciple of Christ. 

      John Bunyan. He knew that if he were to keep on preaching, it would bring great harm to his family. So what did he do? Did he keep on preaching? He said, “absolutely, keep preaching.” He wrote from his jail cell – “parting with my wife and four children has often been to me in this place, as the pulling of flesh from my bones. And not only though, because I am fond of these great mercies. But also cuz I have often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries and wants that my poor family is likely to be meeting with. Especially my poor blind child who lay nearer to my heart than all I have besides. Oh the thought of the hardships that my blind one might go under breaks my heart to pieces, but yet,” Bunyan writes, from a prison cell, “I must venture all with God. Oh, I am like a man pulling down his house over his wife and children, yet, I must do it. I must do it.” JESUS requires superior love. Does he have it from you? If not, you cannot be his disciple.  

2.       2. Jesus requires exclusive loyalty. Carry your cross. Only time you would ever carry a cross (put yourself in their shoes back when the Bible was written), is if you were a convicted criminal, punished to die. A cross beam was hoisted on to your back to carry through the town as public humiliation on the way to your death. We could translate it to “if you do not pick up your electric chair, you cannot follow Jesus”... Even then, the cross still involves so much more cruelty and torture. 

 
      Think about it… if you’re carrying a cross, you’re like a dead man walking. No more dreams, plans, or ideas for your life. Everything over. No more pride or honor. Nothing. This is the picture Jesus gives to describe what it means to follow him. Any takers? 

 
      Through the cross of Christ, we die to the life we live. If you are a Christian, according to scripture, you are dead. To yourself, your dreams, your hopes, your plans, your ideas. For what is going to happen in your life. Hate even your own life. Can’t live based on what you desire, want, or hope for. Dead to them. “I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.” (But if you’re reading this, you must still be breathing, right? I’m breathing as I type this), so… how do we live in Christ? Be dead to self, alive in Christ?

      Dead to self-esteem thinking, centered planning, self-comforting, self-saturated desiring, but alive to Christ-esteem thinking, honoring, desiring, planning and centered living.

      Our entire identity is wrapped up in who He is. Changes not only our perspective, but our priority. You do not determine where you live. House. Car you drive. Clothes you wear. Things you buy. Plans you make. Christ now determines everything. You have died to the life you live. You don’t determine anything in your life anymore. Christ determines it all. That is a huge claim of authority over you."

"Let’s continue in Luke 14. 

As Christians, we are workers constructing a building. We need to ESTIMATE the cost before we start. To see if there will be enough money to complete it. 

Jesus gave us a clear warning against making hasty emotional decisions to follow him. 

You better realize the cost. It’s so common today to just asked – 'Do you believe that you’re a sinner? Do believe in Jesus? Well, welcome to the Kingdom!' Here’s the problem, the devil can say yes to both those things. Meanwhile Jesus is pleading, count the cost, count the cost, COUNT THE COST! Before you take one step forward. Before you do anything."

John Stott said– “The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half-built towers - the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. For thousands of people still ignore Christ's warning and undertake to follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so-called 'nominal Christianity'. In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved; enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great, soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit the convenience. no wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism."

A while back a friend of mine and I shared thoughts on this. Counting the cost. We both agreed that as we were young when we first encountered Jesus, neither of us knew there was a cost, much less measured the greatness of it. Were we gypped? But we wholeheartedly believe that Christ is alive inside us, hmm. Have we really just now started to see the picture? Over all these years?

We also both agreed that this is a journey that is going to look extremely different for the both of us. And for everyone and anyone else who takes it also. A journey of getting on our knees and burying our faces into the ground. A journey filled with the greatest joy on the face of this earth. And a journey beginning first with rediscovering the depth of the love and cherish that the God of this universe has for us. His masterpiece.

He does not waste anything. Ever. As you embark on this journey too, let's remember that we are where we are right now for a reason. Let's walk in it.