Don’t read this if you find following Jesus Christ boring, inconvenient, uncomfortable or offensive. Don’t read this if you believe that He was merely a historical figure or a figment of imagination. Read on at your sensibilities being offended.

Christianity has become a cheap heritage in America. It has become a box to check on a form of our “religious preference.” It has become a loose association devoid of the depth that is achieved only by the Spirit’s leading. It has become a Sunday potluck of pop culture and personal preferences absent of the sword’s edge only found in the Bible. This Christianity places Jesus next to our idols of sex, entertainment, recreation, pleasure and ego neatly on the shelves of our hearts.

The only box the early missionaries to inland Asia packed was a pine box–their coffin. They knew they would return only to native shores by death. The only box the Carthusian monks knew was four stone walls of Newgate Prison chained standing left to starve to death. The box Bonhoeffer knew was the four walls of a nazi prison cell. Consider Polycarp in his 80’s knowing only flames of fire as he was burnt alive praying and praising God the entire time. How many Roman Christians paid for their lives at the wicked pleasures of Nero and Diocleatian in a box called the Coliseum?

These and many others of our brothers and sisters have paid the ultimate price because their refusal to deny Christ or depart from the faith as so many are in the habit of doing so. They have held fast to the hand that has taken hold of their lives. They have held loosely their lives, dreams, desires, and futures allowing the Spirit to be their guide. They did not try to control their
destiny. They did not live safe lives, because their lives did not belong to themselves. They did because they loved Jesus more than their own lives. And because, only Jesus could, through the purity of his blood as a sacrifice, satisfy the wrath of God against sinful humanity and offer the only true form of hope and redemption for their lives.

Remember this, Christ paid in blood. We want to be served comfortably, eat at every occasion, misspending and misuse the tithes and offerings on pleasure-filled escapades and label them “programs” and “activities,” and receive the recognition and homage that is only due Christ. Our inability to die to the flesh and walk in the Spirit has left us powerless, impotent an confused.

We have become addicts of a thousand forms of pleasure. We fear boredom more than we fear The Lord. Fifty years ago, A.W. Tozer wrote, “the present inordinate attachment to every form of entertainment is evidence that the inner life of modern man is in serious decline.”

Let me remind you of four teenage, Hebrew boys (Daniel, Hannaniah, Mishael, Azariah) who because of their refusal to accept cultural influence and rampant hedonism choose to be roasted alive and thrown as a piece a meat to hungry lions. Yet, God preserved these. So many others, He released from this world and brought them home.

“Home” a word many Christians have forgotten or never been instructed of its meaning. Home is the place of greatest attachment.

What home are you living for?

The words of Peter, killed for following Jesus,

“Friends, this world is not your home, so don’t make yourselves cozy in it. Don’t indulge your ego at the expense of your soul. Live an exemplary life among the natives so that your actions will refute their prejudices. Then they’ll be won over to God’s side and be there to join in the celebration when he arrives.” (1 Peter 2:11-12, The Message)