Viral Faith

See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? Isaiah 43:19 Recently, I had a spiritual breakthrough.  It was not that I received a new message or gained new information.  It was perspective regarding the nature of authentic faith.  I believe that God is continually doing new things in our lives and communities.  There is no room for complacency or commonplaceness in following Jesus.  So, if God is creating in us a newness of life, equipping us for new challenges, and sending us new journeys, why is the Christian faith so dull, life-sucking (instead of life-giving), and fear-based in so many people who identify themselves as Christian?  Here are four reasons why we may have misdirected faith: 1. We misunderstand the radicalness of the calling to follow Jesus .  In the Bible, Jesus asked his disciples to follow him. To follow, meant to leave lifestyles, vocations, and even relationships behind to fo...

 "For my people have done two evil things: They have abandoned me— the fountain of living water. And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all! Jeremiah 2:13 (NLT) One of the classic stories of the Bible involves the dramatic release of the fledgling Hebrew nation from the oppressive Egyptian empire.  This is done through God's dramatic and miraculous intervention that culminates with the spliting of the Red Sea,  As the story continues, the Hebrew people are brought to Mt. Sinai, where God would summon their leader, Moses, to receive the laws for governing his people.  This conversation would take 40 days.  In those 40 days, in the absence of their leader, the Hebrew people would demand to make a statue that would represent the God who brought them out of Egypt. (see the entire book of Exodus). One of the interesting notes of this story is that the Hebrews did not think they were worshiping a different God, but that the...