Radical or normal?

The call to follow Jesus is not a call to the easy life or a life of comfort. It is a call to “radical followership.” While we might say this is true, we must ask ourselves if our lives demonstrate this is true. Chan writes, “Lukewarm people are moved by the stories about people who do radical things for Christ, yet they do not act. They assume such action is for ‘extreme’ Christians, not average ones. Lukewarm people call ‘radical’ what Jesus expected of all His followers.” (Crazy Love, p. 70-71)

I remember listening to the story of a woman who gave up her job as a captain on a heavy jet for a major airline, and instead, travelled with a group of evangelists for a year. My thought as she shared her story was, “she’s crazy!” The more I read the pages of Scripture, the better I understand her choice. Now I would simply call her decision normal by New Testament standards. Giving up everything and following Jesus is something required of a normal follower of Christ. We have come to the point in our comfortable lives where the normal actions of someone who has given their life to Christ are seen as being radical.

What is the radical call for followers of Christ? Doing what it is that Jesus wants us to do, when He wants us to do it. In other words, living out the Word in practice, not simply agreeing in theory. It means that when God says we must love our enemies, we actually do. When God says that we cannot love God and money, we ensure we have actually chosen God over money. It means we do not simply listen to the Word of God and fool ourselves, but we actually live it out (James 1:22). It means when God says go we go and when God says stay we stay.

If we are in love with Jesus we begin to see what is considered radical by the lukewarm, as being completely normal for a follower of Jesus. Would you ever be accused as doing something radical because God asked you to?