By: Curt Williams, Founder & Executive Director
It is like the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and he shows up each week at church and no one wants to notice. Everyone looks the other way. No one wants to acknowledge the presence of a looming issue that even most pastors avoid. It is a subject best avoided or only addressed in quick snippets before moving on to a quaint moral homily for the parishioners to consider while they hurry home to Sunday dinner and an afternoon nap.
The question is: Why are so few professing Christ-followers truly surrendering to Him? It must be frustrating for our Savior to deal with.
As part of the Trinity, he did not squash humanity like a nuisance insect when Adam fell and chose sin over obedience. He did not leave Noah and his dysfunctional family without an ark. He went to great lengths to preserve a lineage, though Israel was regularly idolatrous and distracted so that he could come through Mary to take on flesh.
He walked with fickle followers and surrendered to a band of evil men who crucified him, while his friends fled and denied him. Before his death, he taught that if any would decide to follow him, they should be prepared to also take up a cross. He taught that those who started to follow, but then looked back, were unfit.
Jesus set the bar high, while today many of his purported mouthpieces lower it further and further every Sunday.
It is clear that Jesus paid the ransom for our sin to redeem us from God’s wrath, but if he loves us the way he says he does, and getting our sin-bill paid was all that mattered, we would have died the moment we were made righteous. He would have taken us home to be with him and being born again would be immediately terminal. But that is not his plan, and he leaves us here to do his work until the day we are finally called home. That work is simple in theory, but obviously, it is very difficult in practice as so few actually do it. He left us here to care for the poor, to take care of widows and orphans, to seek to bring his kingdom to earth and to make disciples of all nations.
Is it not strange that so few are actually going into all the world to share the Gospel with those who have not heard? Would it not be strange to enter heaven and gain all that inheritance while so many others never received even the opportunity to hear? It would be like attending an exclusive feast while surrounded by those who are starving to death, and we never share even a morsel.
By now, you are either cheering on this column or wishing you had never begun to read it. Yet think on this:
What would truly surrendering your life to Jesus Christ look like? Have you only asked him to be your Savior, while neglecting to make him your Lord?
We have a saying around here: There’s a big difference between spiritual willingness and physical obedience. Many spiritual people are willing, but few are obedient to actually DO. What our nation needs is not more Democrats or Republicans, but more fully surrendered followers of Christ. The rest is temporary, we are to be about the eternal.
