We Are the Body???

Last night, my wife Ali and I attended a Casting Crowns concert in Cedar Rapids along with like 3,000 other people. I have to say first of all that I love Casting Crowns and Mark Hall! I feel as though they are extremely down to earth and they sing truth in every one of their songs. The concert started out with the song until the whole world hears which is a new song of theirs that I really neither like nor dislike but as I sang the words with those 3,000 people, the question began to dawn on my mind, "Do we mean the words that we sing?" The song says that we'll keep singing until the whole world hears and yet so often it would appear that we could care less if the world hears the gospel! After this song they began to sing one of my favorites, We are the Body and as they sang the words "Jesus paid much to high a price for us to pick and choose who should come, and we are the body of Christ." I couldn't help but feel a mixture of extreme conviction and anger. The truth of the matter is that we are the actual Body of Christ, His ambassadors on this earth and yet what we portray to those around us is NOT love, is NOT acceptance, is NOT understanding but rather indifference at best and down right hate at worst! I am increasingly convinced that we are, for the most part living in ignorance at the call God has placed on the hearts of those who call themselves His disciples. Oh God, that we would actually begin to live like we were the Body, that we would actually begin to reach with His hands, see with His eyes, and love with His heart!

what is important?

How do we teach our kids the things that are truly important? We tell them this or that is important. We correct or discipline them when they do things that are contrary to what we teach them as important. We do our best to show them by example the things we hold as important. This however brakes down somewhere along the way. We tell our kids that it's important not to lie but when someone calls who we don't want to talk to we tell them to say we aren't here. We tell them that it's important to care about others but when the guy on the street is asking for money we grumble something about how they would probably just use it for drugs and speed on by.
As followers of Jesus we do the same things. We say that we care about people and yet only reach out to the ones who look and sound like us, or we avoid those who may smell. We say that we are a follower of Jesus and yet do things that he would never do, go places he would never have us go, or say things he would never say. I went to hear a guy named Andy Kampman speak last night about reaching the world and I wondered when our comfort became so important in serving God? I realized that I say I want to follow Jesus, but cringe at the thought of being outside of my comfort zone. I sat I am about loving people but when was the last time I committed myself to praying for God to send workers to those people who are dying without knowing Christ? Or when was the last time I prayed for those who are trying to reach them. How dare we call ourselves Christians and not hold to what Christ saw as important! Forgive us God for this injustice! Forgive us for dragging your name down to our level of comfort! Forgive us for misrepresenting what you see as important!

a broken heart and new perspective

Recently I feel as though God has begun to do a new thing in my heart, waking me up to the reality of the lost. It amazes me at times how naive I and many others can be about the reality of unreached lost people in our so called modern world. I just recently realized that a little under half of the world's population have never heard the gospel message, a little under HALF! Doesn't that strike you as impossible? We hear the gospel every day and yet there are millions of people living and dying that don't even know the name of Jesus. So what does that mean for them? This is also something that I have been struggling with because my human logic tells me that a loving God would never send someone to hell who has never heard. But isn't this the same logic people use in our culture for explaining why there can't possibly be a hell, because God is to loving? However the Bible tells us that the only way to heaven is through Christ and also, Romans 10 says "How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?" To be honest, this disturbs me. I believe it is God's will that none should perish, but we also live in a fallen world plagued by sin which makes us enemies of God. So I guess what I'm saying is that as Christians this should dominate our prayer life and as Jesus said, we should pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into the field, and then ask yourself, am I to be one of those workers?