One week when I was pastoring New Beginnings Church in Easton, Ca, I started my message by jokingly saying:
I was thinking about last week’s message and I feel like I pushed you guys a little too hard. In fact, this whole church thing I think I’ve been a little too intense and I’ve decided to pull back. I wanted to begin by making a small change to our purpose statement. For several years, our purpose has been “To make God known and connect people to Him.” It’s a little fanatical and not realistic in our world today, so I’m going to scale back, make it a little more user friendly, a little more appropriate for our consumer driven society. Instead of “making God known”… “making” sounds so harsh… how about, “We might talk about God.” Or instead of “connecting people to Him” how about “people might be in the vicinity where at some point in history God or someone who knew God, was.” I think that will work better. To go along with our new mission, I’m also thinking of a name change. Instead of “New Beginnings Church,” “Slightly Used Beginnings Church.” Most churches will ask you to come once or twice a week, tithe ten percent of your income, and even do something. But not here at Slightly Used Beginnings. We’re all about keeping you comfortable and entertained. At Slightly Used Beginnings, we want you to feel good about you. Are you tired of all ten commandments? With our plan you can customize your own ten that you’re comfortable with. Here, we are slashing commitment in half.
Recently I was thinking about uninterested people are today on making commitments: We sign contracts with our mobile carriers only to later try to get out of them. We stand before a minister, saying “I do!” to the one we love only to later wish we didn’t. And I won’t even get into gym memberships.
So, I want you to be the judge; I’m going to share some words from Jesus and you tell me if we should be lowering standards or raising them up?
"If you want to be my follower you must love me more than your own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters— yes, more than your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple. And you cannot be my disciple if you do not carry your own cross and follow me.Luke 14:26-27 (NLT)
Jesus doesn’t lower the standard; He raises it up as high as it can go. Because Jesus would rather have a small group of deep people than a large group of shallow people.
When I was a kid my grandparents had a pool. When we were younger we were limited to the shallow end of the pool. Do you remember the shallow end? AKA the “kiddie side?” There was so much you couldn’t do in the shallow end. The theme of the shallow side was safety. No fun.
The dream was to graduate to the deep end. The deep was for BIG KIDS. There was so much you could do in the deep end: dive, swim all the way to the bottom…all with a sense of danger. Hours of fun!
Have you been giving people around you a deep or shallow experience of what it means to live for Christ? Perhaps it’s time to graduate to the deep. How? Jesus tells us that it’s all about where we spend our affections. Two things to consider:
1. DO I LOVE HIM MORE THAN I LOVE OTHERS?
"If you want to be my follower you must love me more than your own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters…Luke 14:26 (NLT)
Going deeper in my commitment means I love Jesus more than others. It’s all about pursuing Him without reservation, setting Him first. That’s commitment!
Napoleon understood this when he said: “I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander [the Great], Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and this hour millions of men would die for him.”
2. DO I LOVE HIM MORE THAN I LOVE ME?
"If you want to be my follower you must love me… more than your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple. And you cannot be my disciple if you do not carry your own cross and follow me.Luke 14:26-27 (NLT)
Going deeper in my commitment means I love Jesus more than I love myself. It’s all about dying to self and following Him. That also is commitment!
I find it easy to say “no” to others. But the person I’m struggling saying “no” to is me. Death to self is all about learning to say “no” to me in order to say “yes” to God’s best.
I end with this: 5 Commit everything you do to the Lord.Trust him, and he will help you.6 He will make your innocence radiate like the dawn,and the justice of your cause will shine like the noonday sun.Psalms 37:5-6 (NLT)
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