Well, after a couple month hiatus it is time to get back to stuff here ont eh RSGA blog.  Thx for you patience.  Hope it is worth the wait. (-:

I was skimming twitter the other day and found this blog entry from a Skye Jethani tweet that discusses a church, with which I am unfamiliar, and a book written by the pastor of this church that was calling his people to a "radical" commitment to mission.  Sounds good right?  Stop, use the link and go read the article.  This was a reply to the original review of the book by the blog's author which you can find at this link.  

The problem with this whole thing is we have so very subtly learned from the school of thought called "behavioralism" and adopted and personal power theology of commitment and lost The Gospel.  Jesus is not into self improvement.  Jesus abhors our self centred and deluded ideas about striving and trying desperately to impress him. And by abhor I mean it breaks his heart.

This gig is built for failures.  Easy as.  If we lose that navigational marker we veer off course very quickly.  So why do we try to be something more that failure FOR Him? Because we are human and are little idol factories the primary of which is our own capacities.  It is a religious production line of prodigious talent.  

Far more than doing things FOR Him he longs for people who encounter Him thru their brokenness and find His open arms and "rest" an "easy yoke and a light burden." Matthew 11:28-30 is plain... His "curriculum" is taking people who are defeated by the labour and heavy loads of human life and show them rest.  That WILL result in a new life of action but only because His reat is not merely a "lie-in" but REJUVENATION.  It awakens us from slumber!  It puts us back on our feet.  It lives thru us so that we might be alive.  

Do you see the difference?  Striving FOR Jesus is not The Gospel.  It is not His Yoke.  It is a lie.  Broken people coming to His Rest and finding Life that is not their own is what he offers.

The Christian movement is not a movement of radical commitment.  It is a movement of radical grace.