Like most pastors and church leaders, I give great amounts of thought and time to helping people move forward…but, often find myselfurging people to finish the race, but they’ve only signed up for a pleasant evening walk. The strolling Christ follower cannot successfully navigate various grades, slopes and obstacles, for one does not stroll for leisure among such challenges. Their pain is that they are attempting to meander on a race course that is intended to be attacked with vigor.

John Stott writes

“…The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so called “nominal Christianity.” In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great, soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism…The message of Jesus was very different. He never lowered his standards or modified his conditions to make his call more readily acceptable. He asked his first disciples, and he has asked every disciple since, to give him their thoughtful and total commitment. Nothing less than this will do”

Today, I am allowing myself to be challenged. And inspired.