How much do I need God? More than I think!

Over the last five years since I graduated from college, I have occasionally attended a church called Downtown@8:08 (http://downtown808.org) on Saturday night. I have attended more frequently or less frequently depending on social events, the need for relationships and the desire – or lack of desire – for more spiritual input and growth. Maple City Chapel has always been my home church but “8:08” has been, for the most part, a singles church. It was begun by singles but added a Sunday morning service a few years back for the young families who attend the church. However, the Saturday night service is the one I attend and that one continues to be at least 80% singles.

I attended 8:08 again last Saturday. Pastor Myron Bontrager spoke about the need for Christians to be wild people and live dangerously for God. To do this, I have to do something very un-American. I have to die to myself. Since most Americans do not know what it means to be needy, it’s hard to fathom why we need God.

The woman who poured a year’s worth ($30,000-40,000!) of expensive perfume on Jesus realized how important Jesus was. Some Christians have sold themselves into slavery in order to share Christ with others. The Moravian missionaries believed so strongly that they would never returned to their homeland that they shipped their supplies to their new homes in coffins.

Even though the Moravians went somewhere else to live dangerously for Christ, he may be asking you and me to stay closer to home. All he’s asking is that you give up control of your life so that He may have first place. After all, Jesus reminded us that His kingdom is not of this world. If it were, He would have come as a great conqueror or as a king. Instead, He came as an “ordinary” human who could understand our struggles and sympathize with our spirit. Yet, He did not give up his true personhood as God that we may learn to love, worship our Creator, the One who made all humanity and everything in, on, above and below the Earth.

I’m progressing in my need to follow God dangerously under His control. I hope you are, too. One of my favorite Christian songs from the 1990s includes the phrase, “Let’s plunder hell and populate heaven.” While that may be a crude way of saying it, I do believe that each of us who lives “all-out” for Christ will meet someone in heaven who will tell us that Christ in us led them to choose the true Kingdom over the ever-tightening grips of hell.