Love of Christ

This is a topic that I have been thinking about for a while now and have trying to put into a coherent thought. How does a follower of Christ love like him? What would it look like in our lives? I know that in this life time we will never be able to love as Christ did, surely that shouldn't stop us. So how do we as Christians go about this? I was reminded of the story of Zacchaeus by a pastor that I listened to. Imagine being there and Christ who is God and a holy person said to this filthy scum "Hey get down from that tree, I want to hang out with you" (my paraphrase). The reaction of the religious leaders of the time was probably how most of us would react at first. What the leaders expect and how we as Christians would like to react is to gather our power and strike Zacchaeus down from that tree with lightning and go "that's what happens to sinners." However that wouldn't be against what Jesus was about. So we are called to love those who we are sinners. When I start to get self righteous in this situation or ones like that I try to remind myself that I am just as if not more sinful than them and that Christ loves me. He is so passionately in love with me that he pursues me. So as a follower of Christ and trying to be like him I am to love everybody no matter how "untouchable they are." Now that is hard, Christ says "Follow me." Simple yet so hard. I hope we strive to be like him.

Holy

The church does not need a bunch of people who are trying to act more holy than each other. Think about it, why do we as a church tend to hide our scars and cover up what is wrong in our lives. I question this practice a lot. We serve a God who even after he rose up still had scars on his body. So why do hide ourselves? Are we afraid of letting go and truly serving and depending on God. I am reminded of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. He talks about authentic and living our lives for the right reason. This brings up the question, why are we doing what we are? Is it for the glory of God or for our glory? Do we hide our scars so we seem holy? I hope that we can learn in our walks to be authentic. I know that this word has been thrown around a lot in Christian circles but I want to challenge people to try to live authentically for Christ. We need to check our motives. Why are we doing what we are?

Trust

Trust is so hard sometimes. That is what makes it trust. Think about it if we knew what would happen it would not be trust. So in this time I am continuing to learn how to trust in God even more. I have trust that God is looking out for the best for me.

Learning to follow Christ more each day,
Mike

Growing

Life of late has been a growing time. This is a period in my life where God is building me into what he wants me to be. It is hard to go through these times, especially when I don't know where God is going with this. I think without these times there would not be faith. Think about it, if we did not struggle, if God didn't have us go through things to change us, we would not need faith. Faith is believing that God has my best interest in mind going through this time. If I was were I wanted in life I would not need that same trust.

Following Jesus the best I can,
Mike

Church

Why can't churches act like people who are following Christ? I know that church is full of sinners who have been saved by grace. However it seems like people who say they follow Christ and even are in leadership don't seem to care about how Jesus taught us to live. All they want to do is bicker and pick fights with each other. No wonder the world doesn't take the church seriously. I feel like the church needs to change drastically to become the place that Jesus would want it to be.

Following Jesus the best I can,
Mike

Religion

"Religion can be the enemy of God."
Bono Quote

Isn't it strange that the thing that we do to worship God and understand Him can be the thing that can also lead us away from God. It can lead us to making false gods. Sometimes when we put God into boxes to understand him we make this "box god" and start to worship it. How do we move away from this, to woshiping the Holy Triune God.

Learning to follow Jesus more everyday,

Mike

Honesty

Today I was talking to my beautiful wife and we were talking about what we would like to see church be. It seems in our experiences and the experiences of our friends that the church is a place where people can't fully be trusted. What if the church became a place where instead of putting on a false facade, we actually became a place where we were honest. A place where we could admit that we were fallen people who all needed help. When are we going to stop playing church and actually start following Jesus. When will we stand up and say to fellow believers "My name is _______ and I am a sinner who falls short everday, however I continually strive to be more like Jesus everyday and follow in the path he set before me."
Another thing we would love to see and will strive to have happen is to teach the fellow believers that we minister to is that our lives are the most important witness that we have. So often its seems in the religion of Christianity we have this idea that what we say we believe is the most important thing. However the truth is that is only a little piece of it. I would say that the most important thing is how we live our lives. To me that shows what we really believe, to me the actions of a person show their true heart more than the words that they utter. The question then comes how do we as disciples of Christ learn to live our faith and share it with our living rather than trying to talk to the world about what we believe.

So what is our dream to have a church that loves God, loves eachother and loves the world. I think all of the other things I talked about and will talk about deal with this. Love God, Love Eachother and Love the World.

Following Jesus the best I can,

Mike