Make us Dangerous!
My dear friend, Richard Fredericks (pictured here with his wife Sallie), is senior pastor of Damascus Road Community Church (www.damascus.com) where I served as associate pastor before launching Grace Place. Richard recently began an email to his congregation with some incredibly inspiring words. I hope these paragraphs challenge you the same way they did me! Thanks Richard.
Jesus didn’t die on the cross to make your life safe.
Jesus died on the Cross to make you dangerous for God.
Asking for God’s protection is fine.
But when was the last time you begged God to make you dangerous and bold, for Him?
Or asked that along with staying safe, your children would grow up to be dangerous difference makers and not just mediocre materialist? God knows, the world doesn’t need more of those—folks whose only real passion is to stay affluent until they die.
Praying for your home and job are good things, but Jesus called us to pray for passion: Father, Thy will be done in me as it is in heaven—even if it leads me to a cross. I’m Yours, all in, all the time, in every way. A disciple.
We follow the One so passionate that His last days on earth are called: The Passion. Yet somewhere along life’s way we get so tame we probably bore our guardian angels! We stop pursing a holy passion and settle for a paycheck. Our greatest fear becomes the loss of our comfort instead of the loss of our God-story, and once that happens, faith is boring and not even our comforts really comfort us. I know. I’ve been there. I don’t want to live there. Being wild and free in Jesus really is a whole lot more exciting than being tame and caged by a lifestyle.
So what makes you passionate? What makes you get angry or sad or excited? Right now, maybe just an occasional movie or vacation! If so, go ahead and pray this out of the box (NON-protect my lifestyle) prayer with me:
Lord Jesus, ignite in me a holy passion—a burning vision for doing Your will; and a trust that makes me obedient to you right now, today, right where I am, whatever You say. Amen. Go ahead, say it. I dare you. I double-dog dare you. (Richard Fredericks)
October 28th, 2008 at 6:09 am
I struggle with asking God for those things that add comfort to my life, or even satisfy my perceived needs. But I am challenged by Jesus’ statements in the gospel! It is hard to process some of His statements. In the gospel of John he says:
Joh 6:49 “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
Joh 6:50 “This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.
Joh 6:51 “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”
Joh 6:52 Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?”
Joh 6:53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.
Joh 6:54 “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
Joh 6:55 “For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink.
Joh 6:56 “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.
Joh 6:57 “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me.
Joh 6:58 “This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.”
Joh 6:59 These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.
Joh 6:60 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, “This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?”
Joh 6:61 But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, “Does this cause you to stumble?
Later, the fall out from His statements occur:
Joh 6:66 As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.
Joh 6:67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “You do not want to go away also, do you?”
Joh 6:68 Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.
Joh 6:69 “We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.”
Eugene Peterson wrote following statement in his book “The Jesus Way”. It is one that stays with me especially when things are not as I would have them.
“Following Jesus doesn’t get us where we want to go. It gets us where Jesus goes, where we meet Him in resurrection surprise, “My Lord and my God!”