Engage:Part Four

Jesus wants us to have an abundant life. An exceptional life, or as Eugene Peterson translates John 10:10 in The Message: “A life that you could never dream of.” A passionate life. Can you honestly say right now that your life is “passionate?” Jesus is not interested in how religious we are. Jesus wants us to live life passionately wherever we find life. He wants you to be a passionate father, husband, and friend. He wants you to be a passionate mother, wife, and friend. He wants you to be a passionate teenager. A passionate child.

A passionate life is not a life of comfort. It is not dependent on outside circumstances to make us happy. It is not obtained quickly. A passionate life is a life abundant in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. It is a Christ-centered life. It is a life with purpose. It is more than existing. It is engaging.

An engaging life truly exists for others. It gives up luxury so that others may have necessity. The engaging life rejects the lone-ranger mentality and lives in a sacrificial and compassionate community. Those engaged in the life of Jesus view money as a resource of God’s kingdom and not as an object to be consumed. They are people that trusts the Spirit and takes risks for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Engaged in a passionate life is the abundant life.

Engage: Part Three

The irony is we are not comfortable. The mom driving the SUV with the child star on it is soulless. The father who takes on a suffocating commute for the sake of the family is exhausted. The teenager who is taught to put on a “perfect face” even when things are not is lost. The child who is taxied to one event after another has forgotten how to dream and have an imagination. In the opening paragraphs of Message in a Bottle, Walker Perry asks, “Why does man feel so sad? Why do people often feel bad in good enviroments and good in bad enviroments? Why do people often feel so bad in good enviroments that they prefer bad enviroments? Why is it that a man riding a good commuter train home from Larchmont to New York, whose needs and drives are satisfied, who has a good home, a loving wife and family, good job, who enjoys unprecedented cultural and recreational facilities, often feels bad without knowing why?” That is a great question. “Why do we feel bad in good enviroments and good in bad enviroments? Another way of saying this is “why is ‘Desperate Housewives’ the most popular show being watched in the suburbs?”

Engage: Part Two

Churches in the suburbs buy into the honor code as well. Whole staff meetings are focused around how to make people comfortable. We discuss parking issues, easy access points, and how not to be too offensive. We stand up and say we are going to go to downtown Atlanta to visit a homeless shelter on Monday night but we can come home to our comfortable beds instead of saying we need two families who will move to downtown and live among the homeless for a year. We create sports programs that pull kids out of public sports with unchurched kids because they need to be in a “Christian environment.” We do the same with school choice. We send our kids to private “Christian” schools where they don’t have to be salt and light in a dark world. They can just hang out among other salty kids. Why do we go to extreme measures? Because we are following the honor code: everything is fine and my life is in order – We are comfortable.