Thoughts and Sunday Ponderings

Today (Sunday) I am grateful that I live now and not back when Jesus was walking around in human form on the earth. Because I’m not sure I would have wanted to follow Him back then. I am by nature a rule follower and He always seemed to be changing those up. I say all this because today in church we were studying John 5:1-15 when Jesus tells the man at the healing pool to get up and carry his mat on the Sabbath after He healed him. And I get that healing is more important than the rule of no work on the Sabbath. But it got me to thinking that most of the time Jesus was telling people to do all kinds of things that differed from what the Church told them. So, I was also thinking, I wonder what practices of the church Jesus would counter if He was walking around today. Then I realized that He is here, and that we can and probably should be asking Him to speak to our hearts about what we need to leave behind as religion in order to follow Him the way He intended us to. It’s kind of like what I’m reading in the book Crazy Love—that often we say we are following Christ, but we really aren’t leading the kind of radical lives that He would have us live. If our true love was Christ and we were pursuing Him with ALL we have, what would that look like? All I can say is that I am asking God to change me into that kind of person—a person who gives extravagantly, who loves with mind and body and actions. So, friends, hold me to it.