Rebekah Lorenzo is one of our students that participated in one area of the Radical Experiment (click here for info on that) this summer by stepping out of her comfort zone and going to West Virginia to show Christ's love to the people up there. I asked her to blog a little about her experience and here is what she wrote. Enjoy how God is speaking to and through our students...you might learn something. I did.
In Luke 9:23, Jesus tells the disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” I’ve almost always felt something like guilt or anxiety when I’ve come across this verse, although I’ve never completely understood it. What did Christ mean by “come after” and “take up his cross daily”? I never realized how much of this verse’s message I had just been glossing over before until we started to read the book Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman on our way to West Virginia. The book was basically about what it means to be follower of Jesus rather than just a fan of Jesus, and Idleman explains that this is what He’s telling us about in Luke 9:23. Idleman also explains that the Greek term that was translated to “come after” really means to pursue, almost as a boy would pursue a girl. So what Jesus is saying is that if we want to pursue a relationship with Him, we need to deny ourselves and take up our crosses daily and follow Him. I also learned that “denying myself” and “taking up my cross daily” means denying my own needs and any other selfish causes so that every day I can “take up” God’s cause, instead.
Another thing addressed in the book that stood out to me that week was that one way people sometimes “cheer” for Jesus as fans would instead of following Him as real disciples should is by putting on masks and hiding behind rituals and boundaries so that others can’t see their weaknesses. I felt really convicted about holding back from my friends in that way, especially the ones who weren’t Christians. My group at the camp spent a few days visiting a birthing center for female prisoners, which was basically a place where women came from prisons all over the country when they were six months pregnant and stayed until their children were old enough to go up for adoption. On the first day there, I met a mother who told us that she had spent a lot of time in prison, and that some of the best and most interesting people she had ever met, she had met there. She said that this was because, when someone is incarcerated, they can’t be identified anymore by money or status or even their old friends. We heard similar ideas when we went to visit a men’s prison, and heard testimonies from some violent offenders who had formed a support group. Prisoners in a way are stripped of their resources so that all that remains is their character and the memory of what they’ve done to get where they are, and so their character is what defines them. I think now that this is what Christ wants from us as followers. He wants us to be totally open and genuine, and not to worry about people holding our faults against us, because really only He can know and judge us, and His forgiveness is all the justification we need. If we just let go of the past and focus on God, we’ll stumble less often and we’ll be able to find peace and satisfaction.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Rebekah...nice job.
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