Whenever I see different events in my life aligning together, patterns I didn’t create myself, I know its God arranging things on purpose because He has something to teach me and He wants to make sure I get it. This has been one of those times. From the series my church just started, to the bible study I barely signed up for in time, and the book I just happened to pick up a couple of nights ago. They are all speaking the same thing so loudly to me that I know it’s God telling me to slow down and really pay attention and take it to heart. Yep, God who is presently living and happening, not dead and quiet. This is what’s been on my heart.
I read about this pastor’s experience visiting underground churches in Asia and I was blown away by the testimony. Today people are walking miles and miles to meet in secret to pray with other believers because to do so in public would surely mean torture or death. Believers are being kidnapped from their homes and having their tongues cut out so that they can’t spread the message of Jesus. Hearing that alone screams to me the value of this message. That people are willing to lose everything to live for Him. And here we are on the other side of the world treating the Bible like a buffet line from where we pick and choose what we want to hear and believe. “It is to be taken in whole or rejected in whole.” We need to stop settling for this what’s comfortable for me Christianity that our culture invented, where everything is about catering to what we want when the central message of Jesus is about abandoning ourselves and serving.
What a blessing it is that I have the freedom that I can share this so openly to the world through this blog. I’m not going to ever take that for granted and I’m not going to shy away because talking about stuff like this is not the cool thing. This isn’t just a book with a bunch of stories in it, it is 66 different books within one book telling the exact same true story. A story that is going to end very soon.
If we could fully fathom the connection of it all from Genesis to Revelation, and how it is the most important truth we could ever seek out, then we would care. We would care enough that it would completely change our lives. It would make us just as radical as our brothers and sisters around the world who are sacrificing everything they have to follow Jesus-our only chance for redemption. I'm seeking out truth because I want to trully understand, I want be radically changed.
