The Life Experience

A great challenge this week, via Praxis Church and the great message taught by Sean Mortenson on Sunday: What does it really mean to actually follow and be a disciple?

Looking into what being a disciple is, it is nothing short of surrendering everything that we place our identity in and giving ourselves into being like our discipler, Christ.

So easily we get caught up in life and without thinking we idolize certain aspects, people, or situations of our life without thinking twice. I know, for myself, that I take all of the incredible blessings in my life for granted. I forget that all of this is because for some reason God has chosen to give me all of these things. When I begin to look at that, I realize the incredible amount of responsibility that I need to assume.

Things that I place value on, such as time with my family, friends, my church family, my job, school and even relationships are all inherently good things. These are all things that God has provided for me and yet there are times where I think they are all strictly things that I have obtained and done something to earn. When I do this, I begin to be inward focused and lose sight of the Gospel. As a result, I am not able to be a disciple of Christ, as the Scriptures say, "...a man cannot serve two masters." I take these good, and precious blessings from Christ and turn them into my own savior in a sense. The result of doing this is detrimental. Thus, I set myself up for failure. These things are not perfect and I create unreal expectations for them to fulfill when only Christ can completely fill these expectations and desires (of course, when my desires are striving to glorify Him.)

So what this means in my life, is that I am taking these blessings from God, twisting them into something else, and holding onto them and adding worth to them. As a result, I am not holding onto Christ and I am not able to be submissive to where I can be a true disciple, that I am called to be.

This does not mean that I need to give up, throw out, or walk away from these blessings in my life. However, it does mean that I need to continue to be looking at them as that, blessings. When I do that, and remember where they came from I can look to praise God for these things and use them as instruments to bring Him glory.