Do you take the words of Jesus seriously? Are you in love with God or just his stuff?

Francis Chan makes a challenging statement in his book, "Crazy Love", "I question whether many American churchgoers are really in love with God because they are so hesitant to do anything for Him." I am not on the bandwagon of getting down on churches, just the people who say they belong to them.

The Christian norm these days seems to be less about an intimate committed love relationship to Jesus and more about a desire to live by modern cultural standards. The voice of Jesus has taken a back seat to the voice of culture. The lust for luxury and entertainment has modern Christians farther away from a life of commitment and closer to a life of comfort. We must get back to the words of Jesus as a foundational platform for living or we will miss the life he created us for.

Think of the stories you've heard. A missionary gives his life to reach a remote tribe with the gospel. A college student sells all her possessions and moves to Africa to love orphans. A doctor gives up his six figure salary to live in poverty attending to the forgotten lepers of Mexico. What incredible testimonies have you heard lately about people giving everything to love and live like Jesus, to see him displayed to all the earth? I want you to stop calling these people radical. Stop calling them extreme. After all, these stories are about normal people following the normal lifestyle of Jesus.

We must stop defining norm by what we see the crowd doing. Take your eyes of off the crowd for a minute, pull away and watch those who left the crowd long ago to follow Jesus. Crowds flocked to Jesus when He was healing the sick and performing miracles. But when Jesus laid out what it meant to truly stick with him and follow him the crowd left. They said to each other, this way of life Jesus talks about is too hard to accept. They didn't say it was too hard to do, they said it was too hard to accept. What is it about following Jesus that you don't want to accept?

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. There is no other genuine, authentic, fulfilling way to live. Being a Christian used to mean a follower of Jesus who is with him learning how to be like him. Now I suppose it just means your part of the crowd. Will you continue to follow the crowd or will you truly follow Jesus? In actuality Jesus isn't calling us to live a life for him, he wants us to live life with him.

If you're ready to start living with Jesus and you want to know the way of life he teaches go right now and read Matthew 5-7.

- Josh