The Mexi-blog pt.9- Why there was no part 7

I’m tired of safe Christianity. Why are we content to merely attend church every week? Where have we gotten this idea that going to church and paying our tithe is all there is to being like Jesus? Jesus was a radical! He challenged everything that people knew about God and all of their bizarre social customs. Jesus changed things. He made things happen. I want to be like Jesus. It’s interesting to me that Jesus only once or twice encourages His followers to pray. He just assumes that they will be doing that. He knows that if you want to live a full life like He has for you, then you’ve got to rely on God.

Going on a Missions trip allows us to experience the overcoming life. For two weeks you do nothing but rely on God. You pray, you study and you share about Jesus. Your talk is centered around God. Your thoughts are focused on Him. You absorb yourself completely in learning to hear His voice and trying to see His will accomplished. Everything is about God. And that’s part of what makes mission trips so great is that you can leave normal life behind and focus on reaching people for Jesus.

Missions Trips are like a little Christian incubator, where people can experience the Christian life in a mostly safe way that encourages growth and gives everything you need to survive. Not just survive, but thrive. We get so few opportunities to experience a Christ-following lifestyle like this. I can't think of any other times off the top of my head where we can be completely sold out to God and have a hundred other people urging us on. Think about it like this: When was the last time you saw a blind boy in the grocery store and walked over to him, believing that God would heal him? And yet there we stood on the front yard of the mission (I say yard to indicate location, not to imply that there was any grass present, which there wasn't) praying our hearts out and trusting in God to bring healing. We didn't see that boy healed that day, but I know that God began a work in his life.

What you just read will probably be the introduction to my sermon on Sunday. If you're in the area you should come check it out. If not I will post a link to the audio once we get it up on the internet (it usually takes about a week).

BTW: If you're wondering why there was no post #7, I started to write it and then my power died, but being the good little site that blogger is it saved the 8 words that I had already written. When I got up the next day, I saw that the next post was #8, so I started from there. I didn't realize until today that I had made that mistake.

-Jeff-