HONESTLY

On vacation, I read an amazing book called Honestly [Really Living What We Say We Believe] by Johnnie Moore, who is 28 and a campus pastor at Liberty University.  It encouraged me in my faith, in what I believe, in motivating me to act on it, and in so many other ways.  His passion throughout the book is inspiring and contagious and genuine.  (In other words, I STRONGLY recommend this book, no matter where you are in your faith!)  One thing that really encouraged/motivated me was what he said about our mission:

  

“In a culture of self-preservation, the gospel calls us to be willing to do anything in order to make the world a better place.  But even more than making the world a better place, the gospel calls us to put our personal effort, time, money, and every other kind of sacrifice into making the world a healed, redeemed place through the work of Jesus in and through us. The gospel calls us to self-sacrifice for his sake.  We will have the moral fortitude to do this only when we begin to value the gospel as we should.”

I love that!  Once we really start to value the incredible truth of the gospel, of God’s love for us IN SPITE OF OURSELVES, there can be such passion and motivation to make His mission a priority.  No matter where we are and what we do in life (office job, stay at home mom, working with kids, manual labor, going to school, going to another country, etc), it is time to honestly live what we believe!   

As Johnnie says, “Now is the time for Christians to go public with our faith and overtly declare our allegiance to Jesus and our belief in his power to change the world… Otherwise, we are lifeguards with our life vests and our life rafts and our life preservers who are content to mind our own business while the world is drowning.  But Jesus is asking us for one favor,

‘Would you please just go help these people.’”