Embracing a concept

As someone who calls himself a "Christian," or follower of Jesus, I am forced to embrace a concept that is fundamental to the Christian faith. That concept is the idea of persecution and hardship. I read verses like, John 16:33... "in this world, you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world," and realize as a believer, I have to give lip service to the idea that hardship and struggle will be a normal part of my life. So, when I don't have enough money to pay the power bill because I bought a pair of shoes instead, I chalk it up to Christian hardship.

This, quite frankly, is a bunch of bull $%#&!

Sorry if that offended any of my readers! that is if I have any :)

God is doing something really different in my heart right now. I sense that He is preparing me for a really difficult season, and when I say difficult season, I am not talking about low income, or less things, I am talking about real, biblical suffering. To be honest, I only know what that looks like because of the stories I read about in the Bible. I am not sure that any American Christian has any concept of what suffering for the gospel really looks like. I sure don't.

We, as Christians in the American church, need to learn that following Christ is about more than abstract concepts that rarely have direct impact in our lives. What comes first, sold out, powerful faith, or persecution and hardship? It's easy to convince ourselves that persecution just isn't practical in our world today. Afterall, this is America, we have rights, inalienable rights to boot, but does that mean sharing in the sufferings of Christ isn't possible?

I am convinced that opposite is true. The early church wasn't persecuted because of their cultural context, they were persecuted for their radical faith. I believe that persecution and hardship is our avenue to real gospel centered impact, and the reason we aren't experiencing it is because we are more interested in embracing a concept of suffering than the real thing.

We want confortable lives. Our lack of active faith perpetuates a problematic cycle. Consumerism, selfishness and marginalized impact due to dry religion. Persecution is something we ask for when we begin posturing our lives for the gospel. Why did the world hate Jesus? The gospel. Why will they hate us? The gospel. We have gotten too good at working our butts off to be attractive to the world and that places a very real ceiling on our ability to impact our surroundings with the gospel. We need to recognize that the gospel is attractive, no matter how dangerous it really is.

What do we need? we need a new posture... life orientation and pursuit. We need to place all our hope in the work God is doing rather than the work we are capable of doing. We simply need to make ourselves available to people everywhere we go. If we live out the reality of the truth in our lives, it will bring the persecution that marks the lives of the most impactful Christians throughout human history.

Anyone else ready for something more? Ready to die? I'm not, but I want to be. God prepare my heart for embracing the life you lived, and have for me. Thanks for modeling and living it out for me to follow.