Have you counted the cost lately?

What does it cost you to be a Christian? In our contemporary culture, Christianity is becoming somewhat less than accepted. It wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time being a person of faith meant you could count on people accepting your beliefs and even joining you in them. That is not the case very often anymore.  Even as recently as ten years ago, you were accepted as being a person  in the marketplace of ideas. More recently, even that is not so.  Christianity is given a stigma by the much of the culture that is ignorant of its basic tenets.  It sounds very like our forebears.  It is often quoted by Christians as to how that they would like to have lived in the times of the early Church and how much better things were for the faith then.  Well the twenty-first century is becoming very much like the first century. I just hope that no one remembers to use lions – PETA might object

So what are you willing to give up? Fame?  Fortune?  Kylie Bussetti risked that.

 Can you live a life of integrity, a life that is in sync with teachings of Christ? Why is doing that so hard?  The old nature is a part of it. Although we have been saved and sanctified, we oftentimes retain the habits of our past. we are called to be living sacrifies. but the problem with a living sacrifice is that it keeps wanting to crawl off the altar.  We need to die to ourselves on a daily basis. As we choose to lessen ourselves (and our selves), Christ in us is strengthened until such point as our desires and His become the same. This is the goal to which we strive.