Too much fun
Is there a limit to how much fun we are supposed to have? A friend who is giving serious consideration to going into full-time ministry just emailed me. As he wrote about how he felt God was leading him, he couldn’t help but tell me some of his fears: He doesn’t completely cloister his kids away from “the world”, He likes to celebrate life, He isn’t always genuinely offended by lost people. Those weren’t his exact words, but it was the jest of what he was saying.
As I read his email, I just kept thinking, “You mean like – Jesus?”. Where did we get this idea that Jesus is the big killjoy in the sky? The Creator against creativity. The giver of life against being lively. Jesus’ first recorded miracle was to turn the water into wine at a wedding party and today we act like no good Christian would attend that party.
Religiosity says that we are to deaden ourselves, swell up like toads, grumble at each other, sit in the corner and wait for His return. Jesus said that He came “to give us life and that to the full”! He prayed that we would have the full measure of His joy within us!
We were created for life and for relationship. Jesus is at the center of that, not the reason to avoid it.
We need to be Christ-like. We need to go be like Jesus in a world.
We will know that we are being like Jesus when the religious hate us and the lost find in us a source of hope!
Tags: freedom, hope, joy, life, religiosity
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