Are we making Christ who we want Him to be or truly following Him?

There is a danger that we might be living under the assumption that we are saved when we really have only made Christ and Christianity into what we want Him or it to be.  We do not want to dive into a deep biblical study of what Christ wants out us, that would mean that we might have to shift our view point, maybe give up things that we really do not want to give up.  Yet in today’s churches we hear messages that teach us all we have to do is believe say a simple in Christ and say a simple prayer of salvation then go on living as a good person then we are saved.  But when we look at the words of Christ we see a much different story, let’s just take a quick look Luke chapter nine verses 57 through 62.  We see in this picture three men who want to follow Christ.

The first one says let me follow you, Christ responds those who follow me may not always have all the comforts they want.  You may be called to work in places for God where you cannot even get a bed to sleep on, worse yet you may have to go to prison for your belief in God.  Are you willing to give all that up for Christ to go where you may not want to go?  The other one said let me go and bury my father.  Christ says let the “dead bury their own dead,” otherwise you have more important things to do then bury your own father if you want to follow me.  When we are serving God we must understand that there might come a point when we are not going to be able to even attend funerals of our loved ones or be at the birth of a grandchild.  I have a friend his parents are missionaries in Africa their daughter just gave birth to their second grandchild, they are not going to be able to hold touch or physically see their own grandchild for almost a year and a half.  Why? Because they are busy doing the work God has placed before them.  The third man says I want to follow you but let me say good bye to friends and family, he wanted one foot in the door and the other out.  God wants all we have to be given Him we cannot have it both ways. 

If we look up just a few verses we see in Luke 9:23 Christ says, “If any of you want to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross daily, and follow me. ²⁴ If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life. ²⁵ And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose or forfeit your own soul in the process? ²⁶ If a person is ashamed of me and my message, I, the Son of Man, will be ashamed of that person when I return in my glory and in the glory of the Father and the holy angels. ²⁷ And I assure you that some of you standing here right now will not die before you see the Kingdom of God.”  Let us realize what Christ is saying is that we must give Him everything, we must allow ourselves to die to Him, allow God to begin to take control of lives.  Go where He wants us to go, talk to who He wants us to talk to.  We must not make God into who we want God to be, we must allow God to make us into who He wants us to be.

In his book, Radical, David Platts says this about this piece of scripture. “This is where we come face to face with a dangerous reality. We do have to give up everything we have to follow Jesus. We do have to love Him in a way that makes our closest relationships in this world look like hate.  And it is entirely possible that he will tell us to sell everything we have and give it to the poor.  But we don’t want to believe it.  We are afraid of what it might mean for our lives.  So we rationalize these passages away. “Jesus wouldn’t really tell us not to bury our father or say good-bye to our family. Jesus didn’t literally mean to sell all we have and give it to the poor. What Jesus really meant was…” And this is where we need to pause. Because we are starting to redefine Christianity. We are giving in to the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist Him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with.”