So often we think it is our job to push people, and it really is a lack of faith that the Spirit is already at work in them, leading them. We think the Spirit can't work without us jumping in to help make sure they know what the Bible says, or this or that.

Being a Christian is about choosing Jesus and deciding to do something incredibly daring with your life.

I had become a "believer," but I had no idea what it means to be a follower. People had taught me what Christians believe, but no one had told me how Christians live.

us stand up both to the demons that hide behind ungodly laws, and the false religion that props up injustice. Make us into a people who shine out your love so that the world might know another way is possible. Amen.

Imagine what would happen if the prayer movement and social justice movement converged, and we had Christians who prayed like they depend on God and lived like God depended on them? Hallelujah.

But if you ask the average person how Christians live, they are struck silent.

If God's kingdom looks radical, it is only an indictment on the sort of Christianity we have settled for. Sharing our food with the hungry, opening our homes to the homeless, reconciling with our enemies--these are what Christianity has always been.

Perhaps the most dangerous place for a Christian to be is in safety and comfort.

Second-century Christian thinker Athenagoras wrote, "Our life does not consist in making up beautiful phrases but in performing beautiful deeds.

The families had chosen to seek refuge in the historic sanctuary and had hung a banner out front that read, "How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?

Interestingly, Jesus did not send us into the world to make believers but to make disciples. You can worship Jesus without doing the things he says. We can believe in him and still not follow him.

As French theologian Jacques Ellul once said, "Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society.