caught my eye. It was one of those forwarded mass
e-mails that say you have toforward it onto other people or the whole world will be swallowed by aliens… or
something just as stupid.
stopped me. Andy Rooney, throughout the e-mail,
is talking about people praying
at a football game and how it’s been outlawed and this and that, referring to
how the majority of America and Canada are Christian and that if you went to
another country they would pray before a sporting event to whatever god the
majority of the country prayed to. And I knew that at the end of the e-mail I
would delete it. It is just the ramblings of a comfortable Christian asking
that other people make their Christian-lifestyle more comfortable and easy. But
this quote stuck with me:
“I don’t think a short prayer at
a football game is going to shake the world’s foundations.” –Andy
Rooney
“Oh God, please keep the players
safe and let us have a fun time. Amen.”
What’s the point?
Christians are absolutely not
called to live comfortable lives. Jesus did not ask the disciples to join Him
on His way to His house where they would sit back in sofas and watch “Survivor:
Canaan.” He called them knowing that their lives would be wrecked. He taught
them that they must lose their lives to find them. And when He “left” them, He
gave them something that would shake the world’s foundations.
In the first few chapters of
Acts, we find out that Jesus does not just “peace out” and leave the disciples
to figure things out for themselves. In chapter 1:5 Jesus says, “For
John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not
many days from now.”
And then in chapter 2 we see the
disciples do, in fact, receive baptism in the Holy Spirit. The people around
them think they’re drunk- not just because they are praying in strange
languages (did you ever assume your French teacher was drunk?), but because
they were absolutely giving up their inhibitions to worship the Living God.
Peter preached a sermon and three thousand people realized they were not
serving God but religion, so they turned away from the things they once knew
and were also baptized in the Holy Spirit. Their concept of what glorified God
was rattled to the core.
They end up selling their
possessions, sharing everything with each other, and living life together
making sure that they could all continue to serve God in radical ways. The
disciples healed people just by walking past them. What?! If we ever thought that
our little prayers at a football game were worth anything, we haven’t really
read the scriptures.
We need to get away from this
mindset that following Jesus is just a walk in the park, where we’ll have a
nice little sun-shiny day with butterflies to catch our falls when we trip on
the sidewalk. We need to start living as disciples, the kind we read about in
The Bible, and pray prayers that will shake the world’s foundation!
God, I pray that You would continue to rock the foundations of Your
creation. Let Heaven storm the gates of our lives and baptize us not just in a
sprinkling of safety and comfort, but in radical ways that challenge us each
day to walk as Your Son walks, to lose our lives so that we may find them. The
Earth is groaning and glorifying Your Name! In the Name of Jesus Christ I pray,
Amen!
Thanks for reading.
