I Don't Want to Be a "Good Christian"

Yesterday was seven hours in a car from Livingston, LA to Paris, TX. A relatively uneventful drive, minus the loss the life of a turtle our pastor hit with his car on the highway, we arrived safe, stiff, and exhausted, despite napping on and off through the trip. Thankfully those who were driving didn’t nod off like the rest of us.

After a goodnights rest we met at 6:30am in the hotel lobby for breakfast and a group devotional.  I’m pretty sure our matching green (teal) scared a few people away from the continental breakfast, though one man was brave enough to enter a room with 13 people dressed alike.

The poor, shattered to pieces, turtle and the matching shirts are a point of humor for us, and though our moods are jovial we haven’t forgotten the reason we’ve come, to serve our LORD and Savior, and to serve those in Livingstone, OK.

Our morning devotional was from Jonah 1:1-10

As we begin our trip, we need to pray and ask God, where is our heart?  Are we serving willingly out of a joyous service to our God and a love for his people?  Or are we serving because it is what we’re suppose to do, it makes us look like “good Christians”.

I don’t want to be a “good Christian”.  I want to be someone who serves God out of love for Him and his people, and out of the love God has for me. 1 John 4:19 says “We love because He first loved us.”

Our morning bible study class on Sundays at church, which we call the Kingdom Growth Hour, we have been reading a book called “Radical: Taking back you faith from the American Dream”.

In it, it talks about how “self” centered our culture has become here in America, because of the American Dream.   “I can achieve anything, if I work hard enough, and I will have success if I put my mind to it.”  And sadly we’ve adopted this attitude as a church and its warping the biblical definition of Faith.  We have lumped salvation into a check list of “do this and get your ticket”.

 Faith has little to do with what God can do for us.  Faith has everything to do with what God can do through us.  God doesn’t need us to complete his work; God wants us, that is why in his mercy he saved us.  Not for anything we have done or anything we deserved.  We deserve death, spiritual and physical, because we can NEVER achieve God’s level of Holiness.  He didn’t have to save Noah, He chose to out of love for his creation. 

God created everything by merely speaking it into existence, but he formed us in his image.  Everything else in creation submits fully to God.  He tells the mountains where to stand and the oceans where to stop, and yet we humans have the audacity to face God, in his glory and wisdom and give an emphatic “NO” (Radical)

We are like toddlers throwing a tantrum when all our parents want is for us not to grab the stove burner.

We struggle to do it ourselves when all we really need to do is throw up are hands and say “God I can’t, YOU can, Please Do!”  And when we submit fully to God, trusting him with everything, even which we cherish most in our lives, God can do amazing things, not out of OUR power, but OUT of HIS power.