Spectator Christianity

We don't workout enough. I don't mean going to the gym and getting "ripped" on tread mills, benches, and stair climbers. I mean that we don't work out our spiritual lives enough.  Many of us are complacent spiritually.  We take in every Sunday and even read our Bibles a couple times a week, but we're not working out our faith into our day to day lives. We become spectator Christians, watching the game from the couch, but not getting involved. In 1 Corinthians 8 the Apostle Paul says "All of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows some things, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God". You see when you just possess knowledge, but don't put it into action, you become puffed up, you need to exercise this knowledge.  This is what Jesus meant when he said that if we loved him we had to obey his commandments.

It is so vital that we put into practice what we know, what we learn.  If we just go to church every week, but never take it out into to our jobs then we are still just spectator Christians.  I am writing this because I don't want us to be filled with knowledge of God, but never love the people of God.  Earlier in 1 Corinthians Paul said "The kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power" (1 Cor. 4:20) We have to get out of spiritual complacency, out of the idea of talking about our faith, and into the mindset of living out our faith.  I tell my middle school students all the time that Christianity is not about doing or not doing something, but instead Christianity is about being someone.  So who are you going to be?

Backward Progress

I used to skateboard when I was in middle school, and I remember the first time I ever dropped in, which is when you go down a ramp at a skate park. It took me awhile, but it clicked when I realized that I had to go down in order to go up.  You see, in skating your natural reaction when going down a steep ramp is to pull back as you going down, but this makes you fall.  So the only way to make it all the way down is to lean into the board. It’s kind of a backwards principle, but it is true for your Christian life too.    

The Bible teaches that to become first you have to be last. In Mark 10, Jesus says, “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave to all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” It is clear that Jesus had a different way of thinking of success than most of us do.  If you looked at Jesus from a worldly perspective you would think He was a loser. He left home at the age of 30, never had a girlfriend, and didn’t have a job. But He knew the truth about what it meant to be first eternally. If you want to succeed in life, you have to be last, you have to be a servant. This is the backwards way of looking at life that changed the ancient world. Imagine what would happened if we all decided to serve each other and put others before ourselves? What would your work, home, or family look like? Everything changes in every aspect of our lives when we realize what Jesus was saying. How about you? Are you going to be first here...or first in eternity?