Watch/Listen
Let Compassion Reinvent You
Brian Mashburn
June 11, 2006
Audio Player
Ruining Your Life
Let's get right down to it. We don't want our lives ruined by the gospel. There's no money in it.
We want a Christianity that allows us to have more than enough. We want a gospel that allows us to have more than we need.
Paul said, "For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have. Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality."
The good news is that if I am the one who is genuinely hard pressed, God desires His people who have plenty to supply what I need. What an incredible insurance plan!
The even better news is (or at least, should be) that if I am the one who has plenty, I get to be the God-glorifying servant who He provides for the hard pressed through.
Are you using your plenty to create equality? Are you using your plenty to advance the church's mission? Are you using your plenty as a trumpet call from God to go and find the genuinely hard pressed and then relieve them?
I think this is very tough for us. Not hard to understand, but hard to do. How can I take a step in that direction? How can you? How can I let the gospel and it's radical message ruin my life a little bit? Who can I look at around me, who is showing me what it looks like to do so?
When we are baptized, it represents a death and rebirth. Everyone can see that event. And for the rest of our lives, people are supposed to see that event as we live the baptized life. A life of compassion that costs us, ruins us...just like Jesus' life.