I recently encountered a solid reality check by the name of Katie Davis. At age the age of 18, she decided to spend a few months working as a kindergarten teacher in Uganda before starting university back in the States. Five years later, she is still living in Uganda and runs a non-profit organization that she founded. Oh! And also, Katie is the primary care giver to 14 Ugandan girls whom she plans to adopt. No big deal. (If you want to learn more about Katie and her work in Uganda, please check out her website at http://amazima.org/) People often say to Katie, “How lucky you are to have already found God’s calling in your life!” And Katie’s prophetic response is, “I didn’t find anything. I just read the Bible.” According to Katie (and to Jesus), being a Christian is about loving God with everything in you and about loving others as yourself. So, she seeks to do that every day. And doing that for a few years has brought her to the place she is at now.
We so often make living the Christian life into some incredibly complicated thing! As if God doesn’t want us to find His will! Really, deep down, I think we believers know what being a Christian is about. His Word makes it painfully clear! But we are so very afraid to actually stand on our faith, terrified to live a life that demands we truly believe what we say.
In Luke 12, Jesus says, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” Truly, if I am to be honest with myself, hypocrisy has plagued my life. And I have acted more like a Pharisee than a follower of Christ. I have been self-consumed, materialistic, self-righteous, and prideful. I claim to follow Jesus. And yet, Jesus says things like “deny yourself” and “sell your possessions and give them to the poor” and “everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required”. Jesus makes it clear what He expects from His followers: the attitude of “not I, but Christ” that Paul describes in Galatians 2. At the young age of 23, I think Katie Davis realizes this more than most people. And not merely because she has given her life to care for Ugandan children. But because she understands that the Christian life is about loving God in obedience and risking everything for His sake. I pray that I learn more and more about this one thing: to live is Christ.
We so often make living the Christian life into some incredibly complicated thing! As if God doesn’t want us to find His will! Really, deep down, I think we believers know what being a Christian is about. His Word makes it painfully clear! But we are so very afraid to actually stand on our faith, terrified to live a life that demands we truly believe what we say.
In Luke 12, Jesus says, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” Truly, if I am to be honest with myself, hypocrisy has plagued my life. And I have acted more like a Pharisee than a follower of Christ. I have been self-consumed, materialistic, self-righteous, and prideful. I claim to follow Jesus. And yet, Jesus says things like “deny yourself” and “sell your possessions and give them to the poor” and “everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required”. Jesus makes it clear what He expects from His followers: the attitude of “not I, but Christ” that Paul describes in Galatians 2. At the young age of 23, I think Katie Davis realizes this more than most people. And not merely because she has given her life to care for Ugandan children. But because she understands that the Christian life is about loving God in obedience and risking everything for His sake. I pray that I learn more and more about this one thing: to live is Christ.
