When Ray Romano finished filming the final episode of the show “Everybody Loves Raymond,” he told the live studio audience why he quit. The show had more left in its tank, but Ramona told them that nearly 15 years earlier, when he was leaving New York to try his luck in Hollywood, his brother hugged him and then slipped a note into his suitcase. He would go on to find it one day, and it read, “What does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul?”
Then Ray told the audience that over the last decade, he had been blessed beyond belief with his career. He felt like he had gained the world, but now it was time to work on his soul.
During the ministry of Jesus, a young man with wealth and power (often known as the Rich Young Ruler) came to Him one day and asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responded, “If you want to enter into life…” The man came asking about eternal life, yet Jesus reframed the conversation to talk about life—about “zoe” (Greek for “life”)—because for Jesus, the end of the story provides necessary meaning for the life we live now. For Jesus, life with God in the now isn’t disconnected from future life with God. It has already begun.
And that is where some Christians fail to live into the fullness of their salvation. Especially in the western world, it has become too easy to hinge your spiritual life on a conversion moment, and then treat that moment as a get-out-of-hell-free-card, or a safety net that will get you into heaven one day, yet doesn’t have a radical impact on how life is lived now.
There are many ways we can waste days in our lives, and here are a few to consider:
- We were not saved into a moment, but into a movement. Crisis conversion often places its primary focus on the salvation moment, yet Jesus seemed to be more interested in the adventure. Don’t get us wrong, we believe in moments and decisions that need to be made for Christ, yet we also feel compelled to help people understand that God is just as passionate about them after conversion as He was before. We have not simply been saved from something; we have been saved into
- Fear. Sometimes Christians are the most fearful people, even though the most repeated command in the Bible is “Do not be afraid” (it’s in there over 350 times!) Now, fear can be a healthy emotion, but the resurrection of Jesus calls all of Jesus’ followers to be people who don’t shrink back, but who press into the world with courage, boldness, and hope. Sadly, I’ve known very few people who watch news outlets for hours throughout the day who are not overcome by fear and anxiety. Fear keeps us from taking risks, from loving neighbors, and from joining God in the restoration of our towns and cities.
- Misplaced allegiances. As we talk to our pastor friends, most agree that the most difficult seasons to preach are election seasons. People neglect Romans 13, 1 Timothy 2, and other places calling us to pray for leaders and to live in peace, and instead many people who take the Eucharist on Sundays are the ones trusting in “horses and chariots” on Mondays. For a follower of Jesus, He deserves all of our allegiance and trust. He is not the mascot of a party; He is the redeemer of the world. In the Bible, idolatry wasn’t the neglect of God because one was worshiping a false god. Idolatry was worshiping God and a false god. It was holding them together, and this never led to righteousness, justice, and devotion to God and His world. God desired full allegiance. When early Christians confessed Jesus as the Lord of their lives, they were also making the dangerous claim that Caesar was not Lord. It was a confession that changed everything in one’s life.
- One of the great challenges today is teaching people to believe that hope is greater than cynicism. A cynical heart can quickly become a sour heart that struggles to find the movement of God in every day life. We believe in the need for constructive criticism and healthy dialogue, but cynicism can rob the world from living in the joy and hope that is still breaking out all over our world. And for Jesus-people, if we lose our joy, we lose our witness.
- Inability to be fully present. There’s a current phenomenon known as FOMO “Fear of Missing Out” that leads people to try to be everywhere at once, which really means being nowhere. Underneath this fear is the idea that our time is really limited by how long our bodies last, it leads to unhealthy rhythms result in becoming easily distracted and overly exhausted. For followers of a man who defeated death, we don’t believe that life is limited by death, we have all the time in the world…and the world to come. It is extremely difficult for God to speak a clear word into a distracted and exhausted heart. Doctors don’t perform surgeries on moving patients, and neither can God grow a heart that refuses to be still. In a world filled with the anxiety and chaos of FOMO it is essential to be fully present in our day-to-day grind of living life. Because what we believe about the future, means that we can be present in the now.
We wrote our book Bringing Heaven to Earth, because we believe that God’s future is breaking into our here and now, and as God brings hearts to life, we find ourselves thriving with Him in the world that He still desperately loves.