Sold out for the Gospel or Selling it?

When you become a Christian, you’ve been forgiven for all the things you’ve done wrong, you enter into a relationship with the living God, you’re loved and accepted, you’re destined for heaven. Amazing isn’t it? And I love sharing these truths with young people. I love giving them these gems of hope – telling them they’re loved when they feel like no-one cares about them. Telling them they’re accepted when they feel like they don’t fit in anywhere. Telling them they’re forgiven when they’re possessed by shame for the mistakes they’ve made. But that’s like showing someone half a photograph.

Do we tell them that when you become a Christian, you’re called to take up your cross and follow Jesus? To die to yourself. You’re called to serve others instead of yourself. You’re called to love the people who hate you. To forgive people who hurt you. My fear is we don’t. In making Christianity relevant to consumer culture, have we turned passion, love and community it into a cheap product?

And I find myself the head of this marketing committee. When asked how I changed when I met Jesus, my initial response was to say I became much more confident and happy in myself. I was no longer brought down by what girls said to me at school because I’d found love and acceptance in Jesus. But then I thought, when I met Jesus, I learnt to love the girls that bullied me at school, to try to think of others before myself, to be thankful for the good things in life – why weren’t these my first thoughts?

I fear that we’ve commercialised the gospel. That we’ve taken the radical out of history’s biggest movement. That we’ve religified an event that cut history in two. That instead of being sold out for the gospel, we’re trying to sell the gospel.

So what does it look like for you and me to take up our cross?

If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.
Matthew 16: 24-25

Becci Raine

Guest blog: Paula-Marie Leech : Decisions

Each month Nottingham YfC are having a guest blogger. This month Paula-Marie Leech, chair of trusttees for NYfC gives her thoughts...

Decisions, decisions, decisions!

I am currently trying to decide which is the best printer to buy for the NYFC office this should be a fairly simple task after the trustees at their last meeting deciding upon a colour laser printer. But no, now I have to decide which company should make it, should it be HP, Cannon, Xerox, Dell, Oki and so the list goes on... and even when I decide on who should make it I then have to decide which model it should be, the list is equally as endless..., as well as choosing how much I will spend and deciding if what it does is what we need etc. Our lives seem to be an endless number of metres of hurdles, making one decision and being immediately confronted by the next. Not to mention the worry of will it be the right decision, will I make it over the hurdle?, will I end up flat on my face? This reminded me of my eldest daughter on holiday in Switzerland trying to buy a traditionally dressed wind up Swiss musical doll as a souvenir. There were three to choose from a red dress, a blue dress or a green dress some would say this was not a difficult decision. However, she couldn't decide and trying to be helpful the shopkeeper much to my horror started bringing out more dolls with different coloured dresses and then different musical tunes!!! As I suspected this only made the decision making worse, as the more there was to choose from the more unsure she got! Needless to say we had been in the shop for what seemed like an eternity, when I asked her why she couldn't choose, she replied 'I don't want to make the wrong decision.' You will be pleased to know that she did eventually make a decision, the blue dress out of the original three choices!
What still amazes me is the sheer number of decisions that we make from getting up in the morning to going to sleep at night. But what amazes me more is that this is the way God made us to be, he gives us free choice, he allows us to make bad decisions just as so many people we read about in the Bible did, he continues to love us whatever we decide, he even allows us the decision not to return his love and be in a relationship with him. So we need to remember that God gives us permission to choose for ourselves, no doubt we won't always make the right decisions, but we can be assured that God loves us and remains with us whatever decision we make.

Paula-Marie has been chair of NYfC since last November. She is married to Pete, who is training at St. John's college to be an Anglican minister. They have 4 children.