There are languages that haven't been heard in heaven.
Today Floyd talked about the fact that our passions need to be in line with God's passions for the following reason: God is perfect, and so deserves to be worshipped and receive full glory. How does he receive this? Through us. How do we worship God and give Him the fullest glory? By having His passions become our passions.
Floyd then went into a long rant about martyrdom, which to be honest didn't sit so well with me. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against martyrdom at all. In fact, back in the summer I had somewhat of a vision of myself being imprisoned for my beliefs, and a couple days later had a dream about being shot in the head/killed for not denying my faith in Jesus Christ. I was totally OK with it. I think it's almost exciting to be martyred for your faith--but I don't treat it like it's a necessity.
Floyd spoke about martyrdom(namely being murdered for our faith) as being the highest honor and glory we can give to God. Which again, I don't necessarily disagree with, but to me it seemed as though Floyd was making martyrdom the point as opposed to introducing others to Christ. I spent an hour and a half in prayer about this right after we watched the video, and through a bit of a dialogue with God about it, I came to the conclusion that Floyd is wrong. Martyrdom is not and should not be the ultimate goal of christians. Then we'd all just be running into gunfire to, "die for God". I literally had an image of Floyd charging happily at a man who was pointing a gun at him and letting fly. Floyd accomplished nothing in that death.
The ultimate goal and thing that God has charged us with is to love Him, love our neighbor, and share that love with as many people as possible. If we end up getting killed because of it, so be it. But if not, that's not a bad thing. I'm not afraid to die for God, but I'm also not foaming at the mouth for that.
Floyd also made it seem as though being a missionary is the only thing any christian should be doing. I disagree. What about all the people in your home town? Never mind all the people over seas--there are plenty of missionaries for them--what about all the people in your own town or city who have never found God? If you feel called to missions, GREAT! Do it! And do it with a passion! But if you don't, don't feel bad! Whatever thing you feel called to probably involves people, and that's all that matters.
I think those are my full thoughts for today. I am currently exporting the sailing documentary. That is extremely exciting. Catch you all tomorrow.
This made me think a lot of how you are just so excited to come home and work with the youth here. :) Something, perhaps, that I think you are being called to do.
ReplyDelete100% agree with you about martyrdom.
ReplyDeleteSuicide fighters consider themselves as martyrs, too, and all but the extremist groups consider them to be foolish and dangerous.
If someone truly dies for the the cause of Christ then the only passion that they have is an unrelenting drive to want to see their fellow human beings freed to experience the presence of God and the Love that is all consuming. At that point the fear of dying a physical death has lost its power to the point of not even being on the radar screen because the higher call of becoming a conduit for God's love drowns out everything else and is all sufficient.