Hello everyone! This is not going to be one of my normal blogs. I won’t be talking about what my life has been like the past month. If you have 30 minutes, I encourage you to watch this video I have linked above. It is a podcast of Francis Chan, in which he talks about living under the authority of Christ. Our squad leaders showed this podcast to us a few days before our parents came, and it had a very profound impact on me. So I just want to share a little about this podcast.
There are a few points from this video I would like to talk about. One of the things Francis Chan talks about is following Jesus. When Jesus called to Matthew to follow him in Matthew 9, he did not tell him “oh, I will follow you in my heart… you go on, but my heart will be with you.” If we are to follow Christ, it is not going to be easy. We can’t just follow him with our heart, but our entire lives need to be devoted to him. Francis Chan also says that “We have lost this understanding of simple obedience”. He goes on to talk about the will of God for our lives. How many of you reading this are ready for the will of God for your life? How many of you are willing to give up everything and submit to what God wants for your life? A lot of us would rather do what we want with our lives rather than submit to the authority of Christ and his will for our lives. This is what I want to talk about today.
As Christians, and especially as being a missionary on this trip, God has called all of us to be under his authority and to submit to his will for our lives. Now, this is a scary concept to think about, and is something I have been struggling to do this entire trip is to submit to his authority, but as I heard this podcast I understood that it is exactly what I needed to do. If I came on any mission trip, but was not under the authority of Christ, everything I would be doing on that trip would be in vain. It would be me doing everything under my own authority instead of God using me under his authority. And that is so much better. For we cannot do any of this by ourselves. We need to be under his authority. For when we are, we become like Christ, and it is then that the fruits of the spirit in Galatians 5 begin to flourish in our lives. Paul talks about them in Galatians 5: 22-23. Paul says “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. There is no law against these things!” Especially being in the mission field, submitting to the authority of Christ is super important, but every one of us is called to do this (submit to the authority of Christ). For when Jesus sent out his disciples in Matthew 10, he tells them not to worry, for the Spirit of the Lord will be with them. But if you are not submitted to his authority, the Spirit will not be able to move through you. God asks us to surrender our lives to him, and it is a scary thing to do. It is something I am still struggling to do is fully give God everything in my life. But Francis Chan puts it perfectly when he talks about Matthew and Jesus calls him to follow Him. Even though it was scary for Matthew to let go of his life and follow Jesus, it would have been scarier for him to let Jesus walk away. And that is not something I want to let happen in my life. Or for anyone for that matter. I would rather submit to the authority of Christ and lose my life so that I may gain it, rather than let him walk out of my life.
I hope this blog has given you insight like it did to me when I first heard this podcast. I will be writing another blog shortly about PVT and my life in Nicaragua, so stay tuned.
