The time has come to stand for all we believe in, so I, for one, am gonna give my praise to you. Today, today it's all or nothing. All the way, my praise goes out to you. Yeah my praise goes out to you. Today, today I live for one thing: to give you praise in everything I do, yeah my praise goes out to you.
And as these are being sung, pictures of people living on the streets and pictures of people in poverty are flashing up and they intermixed with clips of the band singing and worshipping together with these lyrics. And it was at this moment that I had this thought:
I want to do that. I want to go and tell those people about Jesus Christ.
How would I do that? Would they listen? How do I explain there is a God out there who loves them without them saying back to me, "If there's a God who loves me then why did he let this happen to me? Why am I living in poverty? Why did he let me lose my job? Why did he do this to me if he LOVES me?" I was so puzzled by my own thoughts and honestly completely clueless as to how to explain that.
It seemed so contradictory watching the video of these people on stage singing about giving everything to the Lord and living for the Lord when they are comfortable, clothed, and fed. And then it would flash to the streets and people carrying all of their possessions and people sleeping on the streets.
I'm not totally sure how to handle all of this. I'm not saying that we have to be uncomfortable in order to serve Christ - that is NOT what I am saying, so please don't take that from this. But I'm not saying that Christianity should be comfortable, because in my experience, most of the time it isn't easy.
I guess I would just challenge you. When you sing songs and when you say things about what you believe, be sure you actually believe it. When you sing about going out and telling the world, do you mean it? When you sing about surrendering everything to Christ, do you really mean it? When you say you live for one thing, are you really living that out?
For me it can be very easy to say that I do these things from the comfort of my home or apartment, while I'm in my air-conditioned chapel, and while I sit here eating cookies. I'm not in poverty, I'm not at risk of losing everything because of my faith, I'm not hungry, I'm not cold, and I have plenty to eat, drink, and wear.
My challenge for myself, as well as for you, whoever you are, is to ask yourself this: if all of the comforts of the American lifestyle were taken away, would your answers to those questions above be the same? Would you still say "Yes" to Jesus if you knew that once you did, it would cost you everything? Because we know it can, we say we would give it all up to follow him, but would we still say "Yes" if we knew it would? I know we can't fully know what our answers would be because of the reality in which we are currently living; we can't fully separate ourselves from our current reality.
So with all that in mind, watch this video. Your thoughts, agreeing or disagreeing, are welcome and wanted.
Singing Harmony,
Morgan
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