What Does It Look Like To Be a Christian?
What does it look like to be a follower of Jesus? Earthly Prosperity? Large ministries that can fill buildings full of people? Enjoying worship with other people? Deliverance from addictions? Casting out demons in people’s lives? Encouraging words of prophecy? Miraculous wonders and healings at our hands? These are all things that people can do without knowing Jesus at all. Tony Robbins has changed the lives of millions to live powerful earthly lives and has created miraculous results in breaking strongholds in people’s minds, ALL with no mention of Jesus or submission to the will of the Father. There is a power within us to do amazing things that does not lead to salvation. Most everything the gurus use in their processes is outlined in the verses of the Bible. Truth works with or without Jesus being the Lord of the one operating in the Truth. God has given every man the power to create, but the power doesn’t render eternal life.
How can we die to Self AND put all our focus on what makes us “feel” good? If the will of the Father was for you to be in prison, beat senseless, spit on, mocked, nothing but the clothes on your back, called names and hated, would you do it? Would you conclude that it couldn’t be God’s will for you to be without earthly blessings, money, health? How full would churches be if they spent their time warning people of all the awful earthly things that could happen if you accepted Jesus? What if they said, “if you choose to follow Jesus, your life could look like this…”?
2 Timothy 2:12 If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny Him, He also will deny us
Romans 8:17 and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if so it be that we
suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together
Matthew 16:24-26 Then Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself
and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his
life for My sake will find it. 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?
Then read through the New Testament and look at some examples of what the Gospel brought to the
lives of those that actually followed the will of the Father and made it into the Bible. Peter, Paul,
John… JESUS!
Were the awful things that happened to them, in the natural, His will for their lives, or did
they lack the faith to do AND have all the things in life that God REALLY wanted for them? Instead of
doing without, experiencing the greatest of hardships, being imprisoned, being crucified, He proved His
perfect will by giving them large houses, the best in transportation, servants, and a long life filled with all
that the earth could offer? Wouldn’t THAT, according to the messages we are hearing today, be the
stories we should be reading about the people that followed the will of the Father? If they would have
just had more faith, then maybe they would have been better examples of what the Kingdom of Heaven
looks like, where there is no lack, no pain, no struggle, and no enemies.
