Crazy Love Impressions
“The world needs Christians who don’t tolerate the complacency of their own lives”
-Francis Chan
How complacent is the church of today? How complacent am I? I love comfort, security
and peaceful situations. But when I truly look at the scriptures, I see a life (Jesus’) and
other lives where the gospel was anything but comfortable, secure and peaceful. I DO
SEE passion, zeal, boldness, and an all out love for Jesus and His Kingdom.
I see the Christian Life as it was intended. Not based on rituals but a life that flows from an all out love for God…and it makes no sense to the world. Then why do Christian’s
lives makes sense to so many non-believers? The gospel goes against the value system of the world. We are to love our enemies; we are to give not out of abundance but out of our heart; we are to love our neighbors as ourselves: we are to love God with all of our heart, soul and mind…love Him more than we love our own families. What would happen if the church literally loved this deep? What if we actually followed the scriptures as they were written and not as we have interrupted them? Just one teaching of Jesus, the Golden rule, could change the community we live in if every believer in the just church were to truly practice it.
But again it comes down to the heart. Who or what has my heart? What does my heart desire above all else? Does it desire acceptance of others above an abandoned life or does it desire a deeper affection for God and His plan for the world?
The abandonment of self provides the freedom to serve and to live life…to live and experience Jesus’ life in me. I have no idea what the next move is. I have no idea who or what it will involve. I have no idea how much money it will cost me. But I do know there is in me a voice that says this why I am here. “Trust me. Love me. Watch what I am doing. Let me do it through you”.
As I read Crazy Love I kept having the thoughts, “I knew it could be this way”. I have always felt the scriptures could be taken literally. I always felt we have “Americanized” the scriptures way too much. Now we see what the church could be…a life giving force to a community in desperate need of the good news of the gospel in word and action.
And it all flows out of my love for God…my abandonment of self and my desire to allow Jesus to live through me.
