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Although I wanted to believe I was one of the few, my heart knew I was stuck in a traffic jam. Jesus’ words screamed like a big neon sign, pointing out a route that I had failed to notice as I tried to keep up with the convoy of normalcy. The truth of his words suddenly seemed so clear. The majority of people — the crowd — is traveling the wrong
They’re the normal ones — intent on looking like the rest, spending money like the rest, living like the rest, keeping up with the rest. But their road leads to a dead end. Only a few people — the weird ones unafraid to exit the normal highway — find the right road.
What if being the Christian kind of weird did not mean the same thing as the bad-weird, freak-show, annoying, carnival-barking, somewhat uncomfortable, weird-for-no-reason weird? What if the Bible is talking about a different-than-what-everyone-else-does, good type of Jesus weird?
In churches, normal is lukewarm Christianity, self-centered spiritual consumerism, and shallow, me-driven faith. God has become a means to an end, a tool in our toolbox to accomplish what we want. The majority of people claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him.
Normal people allow good things to become the enemy of the best things.
Most normal people believe that God will never give us more than we can handle. The problem is, God never said that. He said he would not let you be tempted without a way out (see 1 Cor.
10:13), but he never said he wouldn’t give you more than you can handle. Ready for a weird take on this? God will often give you more than you can handle so you can learn to depend on him rather than on yourself.
Too many good things quickly become the enemy of the best things.
We must go from the normal mindset about money and wealth to a radically weird view: gratitude for all we have and stewardship of its use for the good of all.
When people ask me how I regard the prosperity gospel, my response is always the same. God blesses each of us with a variety of gifts. He’s already prospered us! The real issue is how do we honor him with what we’ve been given?
Then one day I realized that my motivation was totally
based, not God-honoring. Even though I was handling money responsibly, I was still putting my security in my own abilities to earn and control money so that I would never have to go without anything again. My hope was in material wealth rather than in God’s rich provision.
God says happiness is contentment with what you already have, with what he provides you, with what you can share.
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. — WINSTON CHURCHILL
Isaiah 32:8 describes this kind of giver: “Generous people plan to do what is generous, and they stand firm in their generosity” (NLT). Strategic givers actually contemplate questions like “How can we be more generous? How can we make our eyes generous? How can we maximize the blessings we have so we can be a blessing to others?”
Psalm 127 tells us that sons are like arrows in the hands of a warrior. What if we’re pointing our arrows in the wrong direction? Normal is to strive for the center of what the world lives like. Weird is to live to be in the center of God’s will.
In Proverbs 5:8 – 11, Solomon warns his son about the dangers of the adulterous woman: “Stay away from her! Don’t go near the door of her house! If you do, you will lose your honor and will lose to merciless people all you have achieved. Strangers will consume your wealth, and someone else will enjoy the fruit of your labor. In the end you will groan in anguish when disease consumes your body” (NLT). Solomon’s simple advice here contains great wisdom: “Do whatever it takes to avoid temptation.” Don’t even get close. Don’t flirt with disaster. Don’t pretend like everything’s okay. Do whatever
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If you’re single, maybe you think I’m giving you a free pass. You should know me better than that by now! And it’s not my standards we’re talking about but God’s. The vast majority of people today cross the line of sexual sin long before they’re married. I call it premarital adultery because when you commit sexual sin today, you’re cheating on the person you’re going to marry later. By choosing to live outside of God’s standards today, you’re conditioning yourself to be even more susceptible to failure later. You can’t build a foundation of sin now for a life of purity later.
If your relationship with God is truly healthy and fruitful, you’ll either immediately remove yourself from the dangerous opportunity to sin or stop and turn back to him the instant you recognize you’re walking into a trap. On the other hand, when you put Christ aside, when you neglect your relationship with God, you’ll open up a box of kryptonite and find yourself immobilized before you even realize what happened.
Which brings us back to the foundational problem: the reason people fall into any sexual sin is because they get too close to the opportunities. People who get too close lack what I call a moral margin.
Faith in God’s revelation has nothing to do with an ideology which glorifies the status quo. — KARL BARTH
