Lifestyle
Ephesians 4:24, 1 John 2: 6, Matthew 5:13-16
This is our third week in looking at the misson statement that God has revealed to the Vision Team, “Connecting diverse communities to a lifestyle devoted to Jesus.” The first week we looked at the word “connecting” and learned that from the very beginning of Jesus’ evangelistic ministry, Jesus was about connecting to others. We also learned that faith in Jesus means a connecting lifestyle. We connect to Jesus and then we are to connect others to Jesus. When you become a follower of Jesus, you cannot help but find and connect others to Jesus so that they might experience what you have in Jesus. The second week we looked at “diverse communities” and learned the early church came to understand that God loves the Gentiles just like the Jews. In fact, God wants all people to believe and be saved, not just a select few. This was revolutionary in the eyes of the early church and not only changed the way the early Jewish Christians had thought but how they lived and to whom they ministered. Now it’s one thing to have an inclusive God but quite another to be an inclusive church and have an inclusive ministry and worship experience. That’s the heart of God’s vision for us. New Orleans has always been diverse but few churches have been inclusive. Katrina has provided us a new opportunity to connect to and minister to the diverse population who have moved onto the WestBank.
Today, we are looking at the next word in our mission statement: lifestyle. What do you think of when you think of the word lifestyle? Let’s break it down for just a moment. Life. Life is a good thing. We all like to cling to life. We want to live life to the fullest. From the Christian perspective, life is a gift of God and we called to live that life for God. In fact, your entire life is meant to be your worship of God. Romans 12:1 says, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-- this is your spiritual act of worship.” Style. We all want style. If you have style, it means you’re happening. You’re hip. You’re cool. Everyone sees you as someone who ‘has it all together’. “Hey, I’d like to be like him....he’s got styyyyyle.” So combine these two words into one, and you’ve got a “way of life that is typical of a person, group, or culture.” Now there’s all kinds of lifestyles: the yat lifestyle, the WestBank lifestyle, the country club lifestyle, the cool daddy lifestyle, the hip hop lifestyle, the gangsta lifestyle, the Uptown lifestyle, the bohemian lifestyle, the artist lifestyle, and the list could go on and on. Your lifestyle not only defines who you are, with whom you identify but also what you value and believe in.
What’s interesting is that when you mention the word lifestyle, most don’t think about the Christian life. Why is that? A lot of people may change what they believe when they come to faith in Jesus, but they never really change their lifestyle, that is, who they are, how they live and what they do. In fact, George Barna has found in his research that the unchurched see no difference between the lives we lead as Christians and their own life. It seems that somewhere along the way, we have simplified this Jesus thing to what you believe and not about who you are in Christ or how you live for Christ. The problem is that most people don’t want to give up their lifestyle. On Palm Sunday, 2007, Evil Knievel announced to a worldwide audience on Robert Schuller’s "Hour of Power" telecast that he ’believed in Jesus Christ’ for the first time. Knievel told how he had refused for 68 years to accept Jesus Christ as his Savior because he didn’t want to surrender his lifestyle of ’the gold, the gambling, the booze and the women.’ Many people today struggle with giving up their lifestyle when they accept Jesus..
By in large, many Christians go about living their lives just as they did before the believed in Christ. The result has been a disconnect between what we profess and how we live. That has impacted our greatest witness, our lives. Mahatma Gandhi is one of the most respected leaders of modern history. A Hindu, Gandhi nevertheless publicly admired Jesus and often quoted from the Sermon on the Mount. When missionary E. Stanley Jones met with Gandhi he asked, "Though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?" Gandhi replied, "Oh, I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ." Brennan Manning put it this way: “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”
Yet God calls us to so much more. We are not just called to believe in Jesus. We are called to live for Jesus and to live like Jesus. Jesus came, in part, to show us how to live for God in this world. We re called to be different, to live a different kind of life, and to be on a different moral level from those who are not Christians. You remember the Gatorade commercial with Michael Jordan and the tagline, “Be like Mike.” Well, our goal as Christians should be to “be like Jesus.” 1 John 2: 5-6 puts it this way, “This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”
So we are not called just to believe in Jesus but to “…take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you.” (The Message) As a Christian, we cannot just change the name of our lifestyle, “Now I’m a Christian!”, and maintain the same activities. When a person gives their life to Christ, that’s exactly what they are doing, giving their life over to Jesus. They give up their old way of thinking and acting and take on the thoughts, beliefs and actions of Jesus. You see, Jesus claims it all. We are to love Him and follow Him in all things, not just some things. Jesus calls us to total obedience and loyalty, in every part of life, our thoughts, our words and our actions. As such, he calls us to a new way of life. It’s a tough and challenging call upon our lives. Brian LaCroix tells of meeting a man in the lobby of his church just after one of the services had begun. He had been invited by a friend, but this guy could not force himself to go into the service. So he asked him what he thought about Jesus, and the claims Jesus made to be God, and Jesus’ desire to see this guy go to heaven. He answered that he liked what he heard, but was not ready to take Him as his Savior. “Why?” The man replied, “Because I’m not ready to give myself to Him totally. He is demanding too much of me, and I’m not ready to give my whole life to Him.” But that’s just exactly what Jesus calls of us, all of our life.
So part of our challenge as followers of Jesus is to take Jesus seriously for what he calls of us. We do that because that is exactly what faith in Jesus is calling us to: to not only believe in him but to live for him. But secondly, our life is our witness. You know the old saying, Your life may be the only Bible a person reads. People want to see a sermon before they listen to one. And that starts with us. You cannot call someone to something you’re not living and doing. Jesus said, “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” Years ago the communist government in China commissioned an author to write a biography of Hudson Taylor with the purpose of distorting the facts and presenting him in a bad light. They wanted to discredit the name of this consecrated missionary of the gospel. As the author was doing his research, he was increasingly impressed by Taylor’s saintly character and godly life, and he found it extremely difficult to carry out his assigned task with a clear conscience. Eventually, at the risk of losing his life, he laid aside his pen, renounced his atheism, and received Jesus as his personal Savior.
So we don’t just call people to believe in Jesus but to join us in living for Jesus. In 1996, World Series MVP Randy Johnson said: “Three years ago, I had a traumatic experience in my life—my dad passed away. I was on the brink of becoming a Christian, but when my dad passed away, I finally made the vow to the Lord that he could have my life, and I would glorify him on and off the field. In the past three years, I have had more heart and more desire, and I feel that’s a direct reflection of my Christian beliefs and lifestyle. There’s only way to be on this earth, and that is to be a Christian.” We are called to a Christian lifestyle which reflects Jesus. The Good News of Jesus will never be heard by the people in our life until first it is seen in how we live. We are called to be an example for others of what it means to follow Jesus. But we are also called to connect others to Jesus and invite and challenge them to live for him as well. And in that, may God be glorified.
