Life or Death

This week our video for Crazy Love talked about baptism in other countries. In other cultures if someone chooses to follow Christ they truly have to give up everything. By choosing salvation they cease to exist in their families, lose their jobs, and in some cases have to fight for their lives. Why is it then, in our culture where it is acceptable to be "whoever we choose to be", that we can take commitment to Christ so lightly?

Seriously, what is the worst that can happen? You lose a friend? If they were really your friend to begin with wouldn't they respect your decision? People make jokes at your expense? Why does it matter what people think about you anyway? Are they the ones who determine your worth?

We have grayed so many areas of our lives that we don't even know what is what. The fact of the matter is there are some things in life that just are or are not. You can either be pregnant or not, no kinda to it. You are employed or you are not. You are alive or you are not. You believe in Christ or you do not. You live for Him or you do not. By not really making a decision on this subject you are making one.

Now I don't claim to be perfect. Gods knows, and others too, that I have faults as big as San Andreas. But what I do have is a burning passion for Christ. I can't get enough of Him. Sometimes I sit and think about what He has done, and continues to do, in my life and I can't help but smile. The best part of it isn't even that He has done great things. It's that He loved me first! He picked me! He made me! He wanted me!

"You make all things work together for my good!"

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Phil. 3:7-11