Whose disciple am I, I hope I know whose.
WOW.
Before you continue my comments consider going to James Prathers Blog to read the entire article I'm referring to.
I believe that church became hollow when we (evangelicals) turned Christianity into an intellectual religion. We boiled down the Gospel to its basics and started evangelizing by teaching people: (1) Jesus died for your sins. (2) You must accept the gift of eternal salvation (though denominations vary as to how), and (3) You must walk in “newness of life,” which usually and unfortunately meant to most people generally being a good person (not lying, cheating, stealing, etc) and just showing up at church once or twice a week (or year). Sometimes step 3 was left out altogether! And so people were fed a Christianity where you merely had to accept salvation and then come to church and you were good with God. That’s it. And you know what? People bought into it! That’s how the evangelical movement grew to be the monstrosity it is today. We preached an intellectual gospel - one that only requires an intellectual commitment, not one of the heart where you radically change your life in response to the incredible gift of salvation. ThinkHebrew Blog
I am stunned, your very right, we all do need to just return to the concept we see demonstrated throughout the new testament. It is shown as a state of being that the apostles were in and yet sadly we did not pick up that portion. We jumped to seeking to follow the crowds example of coming to listen to a sermon, rather than the disciples example of dropping everything and living to become just like our saviour. What you've brought attention to is sadly something I am not even sure I am prepared to be able to attempt, not that I don't want to, I just have to think about how I would go about it.
The lifestyle the modern christian lives within is so jumbled with outside obligations that actually being a real disciple would push out all the other items to the secondary. That is completely backwards from how I fear I am living my life, I want to think I am first for Christ, but I fear I am first for John. American Idol would not live up to it's name in my life and I would first seek to know and understand more my saviour. We are taught balance is important in business, that we need to keep things equal and never focus too much on one thing to the detriment of another. Yet I think we may all be balancing our way to Hell. I am going to have to think on this some, I hope to respond further later. In the mean time, very good job pointing out the nose on my face, Its been there but I have been overlooking it.
