What Keeps You From Following God? « Videos « The Skit Guys

The Skit Guys have put out this hilarious video on what keeps us from following God.  I think this is applies to people who follow Christ and those who don't.  This is a longer video clip (about 11 minutes) but it had me laughing, crying and ultimately thinking.


What Keeps You From Following God? « Videos « The Skit Guys


What really keeps us from following God?  Is it our pasts?  Is it our stubbornness?  Is it the people in our lives?  Is it the things that we have grown to like?  Is it pain?


The point that these guys try to get across is that ultimately its us who stands in the way of following God.  But why would it be us, why would it be me who stands in my own way?  I don't know what your excuses have been over the years, but I know I have come up with a few--even as a Christian.


I want to take a moment and see whether it is really me who stands in the way:


"I have been hurt in the past, I just can't get past the pain..."  yet the Bible promises "I will never forget your commandments, for by them you give me life." (Psalm 119:93) And the funny thing?  When I have given over  my pain and suffering to God, and when I have followed His wisdom instead of my own, I have received real and final healing from God.


"If God really knew what I have done, he wouldn't actually forgive me.  Jesus came for those who did little things, but I know I am too bad..." I know I have felt this cry in my soul, and yet again have experienced the promises in the Bible.  "The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure." (1 Cor 10:13) AND " For 'Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'" (Rom 10:13).  I guess I am neither special nor un-savable in my sins.  Jesus died once for the whole world, and I was included in that deal.  The infinite God is more than a match for my finite sins.  He makes no caveat, nor any requirements for receiving his promises, think about John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that whoever believes in him will not die, but have eternal life."  God's requirement I guess is just belief.  Just for me to accept what he has already done for me.


"If Christians would just act like Christians, I could believe in God..." This is what Gandhi reportedly said about belief in Jesus, and many people the world over have said the same.  I too, have felt that Christians kind of give the lie to the promise of the Gospel.  I read how the Bible calls the people of God to be, and yet I have seen time and time again these people of God fail.  I have called (and continue to call) myself a person of God and I have watched myself fail.  So what's the deal?  Should all Christians be perfect?  Should we show the world that God makes a difference in our lives?  The short answer is yes.  The Bible tells us "Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)  Jesus calls us and gives us the power to live apart from the world, following the commands of God as we do so.  Yet that wasn't the point, and it isn't the real answer.


You see, as we come to Christmas we see a story about God that strikes us differently than our perceptions of the "commands" we find in the Bible.  God came to earth humbly, as a little baby boy who was born in one of the dirtiest places imaginable.  He was born as a human in order to set us up with a relationship with him, and not a rule book.  Even when I acknowledge the rules God gives us, when I ignore the relationship God gives us in his son, Jesus Christ, I end up losing by trying to follow "the rules."  Here's the point: when I make it about the rules I end up keeping myself centered as the point of it all.  I am trying to be perfect.  And I fail.  Just as I did apart from Jesus when it was all about me then.  Yet when I focus on the relationship I have with Jesus, rules and being perfect cease to matter.


When I say "cease to matter" I mean cease to matter.  Yes they still apply, but they become tools I can use to seek to please God rather than become good enough.  But they cease to matter, because I can no longer focus on them while looking at Jesus.  He becomes the most important thing in life.  Sure I still stumble and at times even fall.  Yet those aren't failures because I know what truly matters: Jesus.  So when I am asked about the rules we need to follow from the Bible I can say, "Yes, but thats not what is important."  What is important is my relationship with Jesus.  I don't mean to diminish their importance, but realistically next to Jesus they are nothing.  I learn to follow the rules and accept God's boundaries as part of his plan for my well being, and as things that I can do to please him.


So, like the Skit Guys suggest, it is myself that becomes the biggest roadblock to following God.  When I make it about me, I have no room for HE.  When "I" am the biggest word in my vocabulary, I get in my own way.


As we celebrate Christmas this week, meditate on your relationship with Jesus.  I have said before that all of us have one with him, it just varies upon our use for it.  Where are you at?  And do you need to ask Jesus for the Christmas gift of getting "me" out of the way so you can live for HE?

Rosa Parks and Christianity: Activism

Fifty-five years ago today, a woman riding a bus in Montgomery, Alabama was asked to leave her seat so that a person with a different skin tone could sit in her seat instead.  She had worked a long, hard day and was tired.  She was on her way home, when the bus driver asked her to move to the back of the bus so that a white person could sit in the front of the bus instead of her.  She refused.
Freeze frame.
I have grown up in a time since Rosa Parks' historical action.  Today, I struggle to really understand what this time would have been like, when a person can be told to leave their seat for another person based solely upon the fact that they were born with a darker color skin than another.  And it wasn't like Rosa Parks was the first person of African descent to refuse to leave her seat on the bus so a Caucasian person could sit near the front.  But it was her action, which sparked a bus boycott and the actions of several other persons and communities which made today's work possible.
But what does this historic event have to do with Christianity?  The Christian community was a vital force in the Civil Rights movement, especially as lead by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.. . Part of the Christian message, in addition to the fact that Jesus restores us to God by paying the price of our sins, but is that his grace extends beyond that to our relationships with each other as well!  Jesus said:

¹⁸ "The Lord has put his Spirit in me,
       because he appointed me to tell the Good News to the poor.
    He has sent me to tell the captives they are free
       and to tell the blind that they can see again. — Isaiah 61:1
    God sent me to free those who have been treated unfairly — Isaiah 58:6
    ¹⁹ and to announce the time when the Lord will show his kindness." — Isaiah 61:2 (Luke 4:18-19, New Century Version)

 His grace helps restore us to each other, and especially motivates us to give a voice to those who lack a proper one in society.  And so we banded together with the civil rights movement to give those being treated like second class citizens equal rights.  And so we band together to give a voice to the unborn children of God who otherwise would be (and still are) being cast aside due to inconvenience.  And most recently I have been made aware of a problem that we should be aware of as a society--and especially as Christians so that we will band together to end a problem we had previously thought finished.


The Not For Sale campaign http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/ is an organization that has partnered with many churches in our area, as well as hundreds of churches throughout the country.  There are other organizations around the US and the rest of the world who are working to abolish slavery in all of its many forms.  According to these organizations, there are more slaves in the United States today, than there were before the Civil War!  And they are cheaper as well.  Slaves in the middle of the 19th Century cost the modern equivalent of thousands of dollars.  Today, you can go buy a slave not for thousands, nor even hundreds.  In some places you can buy a slave for $50 or less!


One of the things that we are known for in Tacoma, and the I-5 corridor in general, is our traffic in sex slavery.  There children, teen-age girls and young women who are being taken up and down the I-5 corridor to be sold for a few minutes of pleasure for those who buy them.  Their pimps are actually slave holders.  In addition to this, there are people who have been brought into our country in order to be house servants and free workers.  According to http://slaverymap.org/ there have been at least half a dozen reports and actions taken to their knowledge in our city recently.  And perhaps hundreds more that we don't even know about.  Even from establishments that I had thought about as being reputable--including one that I have eaten at several times!

We have to stop this!  So what can you do?  If you see something that you suspect, call the authorities.  It is not enough to just look at a girl walking down the street and say "Oh, I wish these prostitutes would go somewhere else!" Because the truth may likely be that they are being held to it as a sex slave.  If you see something that you suspect (even at restaurants and coffee shops!) report them.  Call the police, or call:

• National Human Trafficking Resource Center: 1-888-373-3888 (24hr Hotline)
• Washington Anti-Trafficking Response Network (WARN): 206-245-0782

Also!  We can partner with organizations like the Not For Sale Campaign (local contact: Kevin Austin, Free Methodist Missionary with this organization) and our local churches in order to raise awareness and fight this evil in our country and world.  Sin that is brought to the light will soon shrivel and die, but as long as it is allowed to be ignored and kept in the dark, then it will flourish and grow.  Just think of what you would want others for your sons and daughters and do the same for them.  Together, by the power of Jesus' cross, we too can see this changed.  We just need to band together, like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. did in order fight for fair treatment of all our fellow citizens.

For lots more information go to http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/about/slavery/ and  http://www.freetheslaves.net/Page.aspx?pid=348.  Please share this blog and this information!  Send to your friends, share on facebook, email it, print it off and hand it out!  Go to the websites and get tons more information to share and give people too!  This is so vital, don't just take my word, but read about it, Google it, and above all: share it!  Blessings on you all!