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Religious: Join the revolution!
Pastor Don Porter
for South Peace News
Want something more out of your life, something different?
Then enlist yourself as a “Person of the Way”. Join the revolution! The revolution headed by the world’s greatest revolutionary, Jesus.
I’m not sure what you think about when you think of Jesus, but my guess is the word ‘revolutionary’ rarely surfaces. Yet that is exactly who He is!
Missing the point that Jesus came to spark a revolution in this upside-down world - a revolution to take upside-down people and turn them right side up, is to miss the very heart of why He came and to miss the point of life as it is intended to be.
Jesus’ arrival on our planet was an invasion from another world to overthrow the ruthless regime of King Beelzebub (Satan) and to set earthbound captives free. But the revolution doesn’t stop there. It’s about freeing us sin slaves from the grip of hell in every aspect of our lives. It’s about setting up a whole new way of thinking and living, about giving freed captives a life of purpose and significance.
And I don’t mean that it is a revolution whose end game is to get you to go to church more, to keep more rules, or to get busy doing more jobs for God. We already have too many who are on that bandwagon yet have no clue about the revolution. This revolution is about changing the way we think, act, and react and then raising the torch and taking the way into every aspect of our lives “into every encounter, every relationship, every responsibility, and every commodity we own.”
If you see yourself as a follower of Jesus, but you still think about your money like everyone else; react to your offenders like everyone else; think about your career like everyone else; live with “you” at the centre of your universe like everyone else; think about sex like everyone else; find life to be an endless string of random unfulfilling events like everyone else, then one thing is you have missed the revolution.
In our own strength, it is hard to say no to ungodliness because our flesh yearns to say yes. To live the Lord’s way takes His divine power. In order to draw on His strength, we need to develop attitudes of humility, trust and perseverance. God opposes the proud, who think, I can do this myself. He pours out His strength to the ones who know they cannot accomplish the goal but believe that He can do so through them.
The Lord wants us to trust Him. He may at times ask us to remain in an uncomfortable situation or take on a task that seems far beyond our capability. In either circumstance, relying on Him will bring us the inner fortitude to choose His way.
When we feel too weak to resist temptation or too fearful to pursue the Lord’s plan, we must persevere in prayer. That will draw us closer to Him, build our faith and invite Him to work His will in and through us.
Today the body of Christ is experiencing a lack of spiritual power. Believers have a diminishing influence on our culture as our lives often reflect the world’s values. To turn this around, we need to cooperate with the sanctifying work of the Spirit. He will empower us when we do.
In Jesus’ daily life He was most observed by those closest to Him as filled with compassion; and He described Himself as “meek and lowly in heart”. So what will be His response towards those who ignore or reject His free gift of grace?
In a culture where dogmatics, convictions, absolutes, and exclusive policies are frowned upon at best, what does Jesus actually teach us about the destiny of those who do not get saved, who don’t receive the only cure, and who do not come the only way? The first thing we note about Christ’s teaching is that when it comes to salvation, there is “No Middle Ground With Jesus!”
There is no “middle of the road” position when it comes to Christ’s view of life, death, and eternity. Jesus declares that He is the One who controls entrance into Heaven. He says that He is the Author of salvation, the Judge of the eternal destiny of every creature in this universe.
Jesus is also the one who gives us the strength to change. What He asks us to do He gives us the strength to accomplish.
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