Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Radically Ordinary
2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some
count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any
should perish but that all should come to repentance.”
We don’t often think about the fact that back in the
days of Jesus’ visitation (0A.D. - 33A.D. thereabouts), His message of the
kingdom of Heaven was radical thinking to the Jews and Greeks of that day, yet
ordinary for the kingdom of heaven. I read an article by Pastor Burk Parsons
where he tells us that the ordinary Christian life is a radical life in our
culture. This ordinary Christian life is a life of daily trusting Christ; daily
repenting of our new sins; daily abiding in Christ; daily loving Christ; daily
dying to self; daily taking up our crosses and following Christ; daily loving
God and neighbor; and daily proclaiming the gospel to ourselves, our families,
our friends and pour communities. To be holy is to be set apart from the
God-rejecting world system, by God and for God’s purposes. Christianity was
never meant to be on the fence with one foot in the world and one foot in the
kingdom of God. Ordinary Christianity is not a complacent, passionless,
nominal, or casual Follower of Jesus. On the contrary, every ordinary Christian
is radical because every disciple of Jesus Christ is united to Him by faith and
will bear radical, life-giving fruit. Not status quo lukewarm, nominal or
passionless Christianity, but authentic.
Joshua 24:15 “And if it seems evil
to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods
which your fathers served that were on the other side of
the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me
and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
God could take us to heaven yesterday, but didn’t
because He has something for us to do for Him here and now. Pastor Parsons explains that every Christian
has a mission and that mission is not just when we drive out of our church
parking lots every week, but when we roll out of bed every morning that the
good Lord gives us. Every Christian is a foreigner in his own country – a citizen
of heaven and an ambassador of Jesus Christ. Every Christian is called out of
darkness of sin and unbelief, and into the light of faith and obedience (John
3:20-21, 8:12). Then called back into the darkness to shine, wherever God
places them, with commitment and passion with which we radically serve
alongside one another in the ordinary way Christ has ordained (Matthew 5:14-16).
Throughout history, God has done extraordinary things through ordinary people. Whatever
we do, we are called to do all for the glory of God as ordinary, radical followers
and proclaimers of Jesus Christ and His gospel of Salvation, on mission with
love and compassion to make disciples of all nations in whatever place God has
called us to live and serve. That may sound radical in our secular humanistic
society today, but that’s what radically ordinary Christians do, because Jesus
came to radically seek and save the lost.
In Christ, Brian
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