This is something I wrote for our prayer team at church and just thought I would share it with the group.
For the past couple of weeks my mind and heart have
been troubled. It all started when I began to think about the first disciples,
the ones who saw it all, the ones who walked side by side with the living God. I
began to ask myself what happened. What has changed from then till now? I have
been raised in a generation that seems like it doesn’t truly get it. My
generation is all about stuff, all about the “American Dream�. What we have begun
to do over time is make God fit around that, we have put God in a box, packaged
it , sold it, and have given the world a tainted image of who God really is.
Because the truth is, God is some much bigger then that. I can not settle for
serving a god where you just say a prayer and everything is ok, that is not the
God that the Bible talks about. The God
I serve said things like:
Matthew 16: 24-28
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny
himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever
would save his life [1]
will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and
forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to
come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each
person according to what he has done. 28 Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste
death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.�
What we are doing is taking up our cross on Sundays
then leaving it in the car while we are at school or work. Now when you read
through the New Testament you can see the process that the disciples went
through, from questioning Christ all the way to imprisonment and even death for
professing his works. When I read about them and what they were able to
accomplish in spreading the Gospel I placed those men on a pedestal. I looked
up to them as a little boy looks up to Batman hoping that one day he could be something
bigger then himself. As I thought more and more about them I came to the
realization that I am no different from them and neither are you. They were
made up of the exact same flesh and bone that we are. They had the same human
nature and all of the baggage that comes with it. But it is this exact
attitude, thinking that those men were larger then life, that keeps us from
serving God to our full ability today. It is us putting those men on a pedestal
and thinking so highly of what God did through them that we forget they were no
different from us. We forget the same God that worked through their lives has a
desire to work through ours.
I am leave in January for a mission trip called The
World Race, 11 countries in 11 months. I am not doing it for a pat on the back
or a warm and fuzzy feeling, I am doing it because I know that this is a call
that God has placed on my life. I spent so much time after high school trying
to figure out where I belonged in the world and how I could attain the
“American Dream� and it has taken me up to the past year and 1/2 to just stop
and listen. By denying myself, by putting my personal dreams and goals aside,
God has truly opened my eyes to what matters in life. When we do this it is not
always easy, sometimes it hurts, and we won’t always understand it until the
time comes, but what matters to God is if we are willing to do it. Are you?
God Bless,
Joel Dutton
