It seems like we're constantly seeing stuff on the news
about persecution of Christians around the world.
The World Evangelical Alliance estimates that
200 million Christians every year
are persecuted for their faith.
And that number has actually doubled since 2013.
And I don't envy anybody in one of those positions,
and yet, living in America presents
sort of its own precarious
nature to Christian life.
And the reason I say that is because
about 10 years ago,
a Christian researcher by the name of George Barna,
who researches all sorts of religious stuff,
he wrote a book called "The Seven Faith Tribes."
And in that book, he said that everybody in our country
can fit fairly nicely into one of seven different categories.
By far the largest category was
people who self-identified as Christians.
79% of Americans, when push comes to shove,
if they have to label themselves,
will call themselves a Christian.
What Barna also found in that data, however,
was kind of interesting, in that only 18% of the people
who were polled said that they would be willing to
compromise their lives in any kind of significant ways
because of their personal relationship
with Jesus Christ.
That means they were willing to sacrifice
their time and energy, their relationships,
their money,
their health, maybe even their life itself.
18%.
So when you push those two numbers together,
the 79% who self-identify as Christian
and the 18% who say
they're willing to inconvenience their life
because of their personal relationship with Jesus,
you get 61%.
That's the majority of our country.
The average person in America
is somebody who self-identifies as a Christian,
calls himself a Christian,
but isn't willing to inconvenience their life
in any measurable way because of
their attachment to Jesus Christ.
Now we can't do a whole lot about what goes on
out there in the country.
The only thing we can do is right here.
And so you and I have to ask ourselves questions
that might get at the heart of our idolatry.
For instance,
have you ever thought for yourself
something along the lines of
"If I only had blank,
then I would be faithful to God."
Whatever is in that blank,
whatever is on the other side of that "if only,"
that's the thing in your life that
God is trying to get access to right now.
When Jesus died,
he didn't just
allow a part of himself to die.
He didn't just give you a little bit.
He gave you the whole thing,
the whole piece of heaven.
Jesus died so as the Apostle Paul says in Romans 8:
"We can share in the full extent of his glory."
He gave everything for you and me.
Just imagine that Jesus one day was in heaven
looking around, had absolutely everything
but he was just missing one thing.
And he looked down to earth
and he saw you.
And he says, "You're it.
I'm willing to sacrifice it all in order to get you."
And doesn't that seem like the kind of guy
that you can trust with every square inch of your life?
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