Are you Radical or Nominal? – Part 2

It is the desire of God that He will have Children that consider their lives own worthless in view of what was done for them through Christ; Children that will give up all they have and offer their lives to be led wherever God wants them to go including places that we would not want to go “And He died for all, so that all those who live might live no longer to and for themselves, but to and for Him Who died and was raised again for their sake” (2^nd Cor 5:15).

The very life that we live has to be such that we are in constant pursuit of making His name stand in a world of conflict, war and opposition. We must burning with a hot zeal for His name to be known. Not our names BUT His name. His name has to be established in our generation among the peoples that don’t know Him and we are the conduits through which this will happen. We exist for the King and His kingdom agenda and we dare not afford to continue being mindful of the things of men rather than the things of God. The way of the kingdom is NOT self-preserving but self-sacrificing: continuously building lives according to godly patterns. Are you willing to pay the cost through your life to bring pleasure to the heart of God and glory to His name? We have clung long enough to our excuses and got away with stories whereas we are forfeiting the task of bringing the influence of His kingdom in our environment.

Many of the terror groups that have caused a stir in the world today recruit their insurgents by promising them nothing to do with temporal comfort but a promise of something in the after-life. Some even have professors who resign and leave their jobs just so that they may join them not because of comfort but for what they believe they will receive after death. Young beautiful ladies leave their homes to offer themselves to these terror groups just because they have faith in what they are promised in the after-life. We call this blindness and deceit by the enemy, which is true, but these insurgents have it in both heart and mind that they don’t exist for themselves.

Jesus Himself while inviting the disciples to follow Him did not begin by promising them comfort. Instead He invited them to follow Him that He would make them fishers of men (Matt. 4:19) NOT “Follow me and I will give you a comfortable life”. The reason why we believers are not making radical disciples could be that we ourselves are not radical or maybe we are not offensive enough to the culture that we are engaging. Should we not aim at making disciples as Jesus did? Only Christ-like disciples can conquer the kingdoms and governments of this world just like the 1^st century disciples conquered the Roman Empire.

The society right now in which we live and fish men from is more radically opposed to the gospel than the Roman Empire was. Despite the fact that believers are no longer being burnt at the stake because of things like fundamental human rights, the venom and hatred against followers of Christ is just as hot. But how come we’re not seeing this venom triggered? Matthew chapter 10:16-42 records the events that Jesus promised would happen to His disciples but also assured them not to be afraid. However he never painted a picture of comfort, safety, security or predictability to them. When the disciples were being sent out by Christ, it was never about how risky it was for them, but they instantly obeyed.  So how come that in our time we are making disciples that are after comfort and are too soft, casual and easily offended? It’s good that we admire who the disciples became after training by Christ but we barely look into and admire the process through which they were trained. How many of us admire the Peter that often fumbled in the Gospel accounts? Instead we admire the Peter that we see in Acts but we rarely interrogate the process through which Peter (Petros) a ‘stone’, became a rock.

Mark Kolo serves as International Team Leader for Global Activation, a mission organization committed to mobilizing Kingdom change agents and catalyzing Disciple Making Movements