Decent Christians

In America, complacency is an easy thing to fall into.  As Christians, we get comfortable.  We may have a faith in God, but we still try to control our lives.  We play it safe.  The goal seems to be that being a Christian means that we should be a nice, moral, good person.  The problem is, that is not Christianity.  Following Christ is risky... an adventurous journey filled with many ups and downs. 

When speaking of the church in America, David Platt writes, "When we gather at the building, we learn to be good.  Being good is defined by what we avoid in the world.  We are holy because of what we don't participate in (and at this point we may be the only organization in the world defining success by what we don't do).  We live decent lives in decent homes with decent jobs and decent families as decent citizens.  We are decent church members with little more impact on the world than we had before we were saved.  Though thousands my join us, ultimately we have turned a deaf ear to billions who haven't even heard his name."

God has so much more for us than that!  God is on mission to redeem the world, and he has designed a significant role for each of us to play on a daily basis.  Life is a dangerous journey full of adventure and risk.  It will require all that we have, but thankfully we don't have to depend on our own efforts to make it through.  God leads the way, and we follow Christ as best as we can.  We should not shrink back and play it safe.  I don't think God is really interested in how nice or good we think we are, or how much bad stuff we avoided in our lives.  He doesn't want us to bury our talents.  We are all called to be stewards of everything... to give ourselves away to others on behalf of God.  Everything about our lives... our job, our finances, our time, our families, and yes, even our churches... should reflect the fact that we have embraced risk as the central theme to our lives so that we can join God's mission to all of humanity.  God has designed each of us to impact the world, and we can't do that when we're avoiding it.