Crazy Love, Chapter 7: Your Best Life... Later.

So at church this Sunday during one of our services, I was sitting in my office and I took "Crazy Love" out of my bag and started to read, when one of our worship band members, Beka, came up to me and asked me how I liked the book.

I wish I could've seen my reaction.

I kind of shrugged my shoulders and explained that I know that reading this book is good for me, but dang, it is difficult sometimes. It is so compelling and convicting; I hate it, yet I know that it is the only way for me to experience true spiritual growth.

And this is one of those chapters where Francis Chan just kicks me in the teeth.

Let's start with the simple question: What are you doing right now in your life that requires faith?

When I watched the chapter video to intro this chapter, I was feeling pretty good about myself. After all, I just moved to northwest Indiana a few weeks ago to take a ministry internship position where I know nobody, will be making very little money to support myself, and will be well past the comfort zone of family and friends. I recognize humbly that in many ways, that was nice-sized faith step for me. However, eventually it becomes a little less frightening as you find your way and get your feet under you. Yet, nevertheless, I was really tempted to use this internship as my go-to excuse to avoid any unnecessary conviction.

But if I'm honest, there's not a whole lot of stuff in my life where I'd say I am really just going by faith, giving it all to God. Through my 21 years, I can't really think of too many specific times where I set my own fears aside to embrace the terror of simply trusting God and believing that He has my best interests in mind and will do incredibly more than I could ever hope for.

Chances are that probably a lot of us are in that boat together.

Now hang onto that thought for a second and let me tell you a little about another theme in my life lately: God's faithfulness. It all started back in July. I was at CIY and for whatever reason, I was checking this blog and what do you know, I had received a comment from my dear friend Anne (who, by the way is an incredible young Christian woman and is way smarter, wiser, gracious, and loving than I am). She said some various things, but ended her comment with the simple statement: "Remember, Wes, He is faithful."

He is faithful.

It was so simple, yet so profound. "Faithful" is one of those Jesus words that I toss around a lot, but for the first time, I really thought about what it meant to say that God was faithful, and that was something that sort of stuck with me.

Well, not too soon after I purchased this daily readings Bible where Scripture is grouped into a day reading where you do a few OT chapters and 1 NT chapter a day, followed by some questions for thought. I started using this tool and it began me in Genesis and John. In Genesis, I was continually blown away by God's faithfulness. First you have God making a promise to Abraham that He will give him a son. Even though Abraham screws it up by sleeping with his wife's maid, God gives Abraham a son anyway, because God has promised that and God is always true to His promise.

Later on, Abraham sends his servant to the land of Aram to find a wife for Abraham's son Isaac. When the servant gets to Aram, he sits down to pray for God to show him a sign. And what do you know, before he even finished praying, God provided the very sign he was looking for.

In the story of Jacob in Genesis, we see him tricking everyone around him. First, he refuses to give his starving brother food unless he sells him his rights as firstborn. Later on, he dresses up like his brother and steals a blessing from his father that rightfully belonged to his brother. Yet, as the now-recognized firstborn, God had made a promise to Jacob. And even though Jacob was at points a terrible person, God was still faithful to him anyway, giving him the woman of his dreams, an incredible amount of possessions, and the pride of bringing forth the 12 tribes of Israel. From the story of Jacob, I learn that even when I don't deserve it, God is still faithful to me.

I don't think there's any getting around the simple fact that following Jesus is hard. Very hard. That's probably why many people quit following Jesus after He taught some difficult kingdom truths in John 6:66 (someone once noted to me the irony of this verse being 666). There's just no avoiding that God condemned His people in the Old Testament for refusing to give and to help, and that there is a similar precedent in the New Testament. In the story of the rich young ruler, in Luke 18:18-23, Jesus simply says that this seemingly devout follower lacks one thing; that is the giving away of his possessions for the betterment of the poor among them.

I think it's really interesting that in many cases, the people whom Jesus was speaking to about giving were not people who were rich. After reading this chapter I decided to do a little background research on Jesus' command to give to the poor in Luke 12:33, and the resource I was using mentioned that in many cases, people whom Jesus was speaking to about not worrying about possessions often had only one, maybe two sets of clothes period. Many of these people were living off very little, and it would only take one wrong turn or one bad thing to happen, and many of these families would be destitute. To me, this says that I can't use the "oh I'm just a poor college kid on internship" excuse before God. He didn't soften this teaching up for these people who are undoubtedly poorer than I am.

This, of course, isn't to say that God doesn't love you if you don't give or anything like that. Hardly the case... God's incredible love and grace for each of us goes beyond all human understanding. All I'm saying is that I believe that Jesus didn't come and teach we are entitled to a comfortable life; on the contrary, I think he teaches us to live an incredibly radical one. I give 10% to church. But I feel very convicted that for me at least, 10% frankly isn't very sacrificial giving. If I want to truly step out in faith and live a radical lifestyle for me, that's going to mean anteing up some more dollars to spend on some extremely worthy causes.

If you're like me, here are a few that you could look at:

• www.invisiblechildren.com. This is a favorite at CCU; this organization works to rescue children from becoming brainwashed child soldiers in the war-torn country of Uganda.
• www.one.org. The One organization simply seeks to end global poverty.
• www.ijm.org. International Justice Mission is an organization that seeks to end all forms of human slavery and/or trafficking, placing these people in a safe place where they can finally work and earn a real living instead of being mercilessly abused by others. What's also cool is that IJM actually works to also prosecute and hold responsible those who are abusing others, hopefully bringing this system of oppression and injustice crashing to the ground.
• www.onemillioncan.org. One Million Can is an organization founded by Passion, and it's essentially a site that has links to like 8 potential causes around the world that you can support; anything from providing life-changing medical procedures and surgeries for children in 3rd world countries to providing Bibles or recordings of the New Testament for people in countries where that isn't allowed to giving clean water to people in Africa.

Those are just 4 examples... I'm sure you can find many more. For me, this is the way God is calling me to step out, take a risk, and trust Him, knowing He will (gulp) be faithful. Maybe for you that's simply being more vocal about your faith at work. Maybe that's committing some time to volunteer somewhere. Maybe that's stepping into a ministry position at church. I don't know what it is that you need to take a risk and trust God in, but I hope that you do it, because God is faithful.

It's time we take the crazy love God has shown us and demonstrate that to someone else.