PennyDaisy

My seventeen-year-old sister and I were discussing the latest tendency of Bible publishers and tee-shirt makers who try to make being a Christian look cool.  Don’t get me wrong—I have nothing against student Bibles or cool t-shirts.  But what happened to parents (and pastors and youth pastors) teaching young people that being a Christian has nothing to do with “cool”, and more to do with taking up your cross–daily dying to self?

Or maybe we’re trying to make Christianity look attractive to the world.  Problem.  The Bible says the gospel is offensive to those who are still blind.  Christianity isn’t attractive.  It’s hard.  It’s painful.  It puts you on Satan’s hit-list (don’t worry, the less of a problem you are to him, the lower on the list you’ll go).  It also puts you on God’s hit-list, in a better sense.  He says He “disciplines” those He loves.  So trials and sufferings that cause growth and draw you closer to Christ aren’t necessarily the Enemy.

So, back to being cool.  Leslie Ludy points out that once or twice in a generation, there is a young person who becomes totally sold-out to God.  He/She does whatever is required, without thought to how it looks to others.  And they are the world-changers of that generation.  Amy Carmichael is the best example I can think of.  If you haven’t read her story, read it.  I like Elizabeth Elliot’s, A Chance To Die.

To be quite frank, I’m trying to decide how “sold-out” I’m willing to be.  I don’t really want to end up in China, or India, unmarried, etc.  But perhaps that’s not what He’s asking from me.  I think to begin with, I’ll work on worrying about what God wants of me, and not what others are thinking about me.  Yes, living for Christ is tough, but I want that joy and peace that Amy talked about and exhibited so often.  I want someone to be able to say of me (and not just when I’m an old lady), “She was really close to God.”  I think I want to be a world-changer.