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