Yesterday, November 26, was Christ the King Sunday on the Liturgical Calendar. I preached a message entitled “All In,” taken from Luke 9:57–62.
In the Gospel text, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem to be crucified. A man, not knowing why Jesus is heading to Jerusalem, meets Jesus on the road and offers to follow Him wherever He goes.
Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’ (Lk 9:58).
Following Jesus means that one must be willing to live with insecurity and restlessness.
Saying that we want to follow Jesus is impressive. But, we must understand that it is not always a comfortable thing to do. Foxes run to their dens and birds run to their nests when they feel threatened and when they are tired. Following Jesus means that one must be willing to live with insecurity and restlessness.
Image: James Tissot, Wikimedia Commons
Jesus is about the business of reconciliation. Our Faith demands that we be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the cause of Christ. Following His agenda is not meant to be comfortable. To be agents of reconciliation means that we must be willing to live with the necessary discomfort to bring it about.
There are so many factions in our world. Jesus died to mend the brokenness. The Cross of Christ symbolizes vertical reconciliation as well as a horizontal one. The vertical symbol of the Cross is about reconciling humankind to God. Horizontal reconciliation has to do with mending broken human relationships.
How is your relationship with the Lord? How is your relationship with others? Christ cares about both!
May we bolster the courage to follow Christ in His mission of reconciliation in a broken world.
Toby Jones, The Way of Jesus: Re-forming Spiritual Communities in a Post-Church Age (Eugene: Resource Publications, 2010), 133 pages, ISBN 9781608991525. Toby Jones is a former Moderator of the Presbytery of Mackinac, who parted ways with the Presbyterian denomination in order to found Living Vision, a community attempting to offer an “authentic path to those…
Tania Harris, God Conversations: Stories of How God Speaks and What Happens When We Listen (West Ryde, Australia: Authentic Media, 2017), 240 pages, ISBN 9781780781884. Tania Harris is both an academic and a practioner. She has been a student, teacher, pastor, church planter, an international speaker, and now, an author. Her calling is to help…
Richard Twiss, One Church Many Tribes: Following Jesus the Way God Made You (Regal Books, 2000), 216 pages. What can the church of the 21st Century learn from the mistakes of the past? Richard Twiss could be a budding new personality in the Christian world. I recently noticed his name on a column in Charisma…
A special report from the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission. “The world hasn’t seen an evil like this for a generation.” This is how the national spokesman for Iraqi Christians in the United States described atrocities by ISIS terrorists in northern Iraq, which include beheading of children and their mothers and fathers, and…
Vinson Synan, Amos Yong, and J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, eds., Global Renewal Christianity: Spirit-Empowered Movements—Past, Present, and Future, Volume 3: Africa (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2016) liv+ 499 pages. This volume focused on the Spirit in Africa is the third in a series of now four texts. Produced for the enrichment of anyone intrigued with…
Tripp York, The End of Captivity?: A Primate’s Reflections on Zoos, Conservation, and Christian Ethics (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), ix + 135 pages. Tripp York, professor in the Religious Studies department at Virginia Wesleyan College, has been deeply involved in the area of human-animal ethics for some time. Broadly speaking, his work tries to…
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