What Type of Christian Are You?

Have you ever gone without food for a long period of time? Maybe you’ve fasted for a charity, forgotten your lunchbox or just run out of money on a long-distance trip. Something happens when people get hungry. It’s like some kind of supernatural transformation takes place, and all they can think about is how to get their hold of a meal. Thirst does the same thing. We get dizzy, we see mirages, we go crazy with thirst. That’s how God wants us to long for Him! That’s what Matthew 22:37-38 means when it says that we should love God with all our hearts, all our souls, all our mind and all our strength. God wants us passionate! God wants us desperate!

All through the Bible there’s examples of people who loved God like that. There’s God’s mate Abraham who was even prepared to sacrifice his own son if that’s what it took. There’s Enoch, who walked so close to God that He raptured him! There’s Moses praying for weeks on a mountain, David worshipping in the wilderness, and of course Jesus himself who lived His whole life for God. All these and loads more to remind us that we’re not just created to hang out with God a couple of times a week, or to love Him when we feel like it, but to give Him 100% and be passionate about our love for Him.

But is that it? Are we just called to love God and give Him our all? YES! ...and NO! The first commandment tells us that loving God is our no. 1 priority, but it also goes on to say that’s only half the story. Matthew 22:39-40 explains the second part of the deal is that we ”love our neighbours as we love ourselves.”

Confession time. Have you ever found church just a tiny bit boring? Ever found it hard to lift your hands in worship? Ever dozed whilst reading the Bible? Many times in my own Christian walk, I’ve found that I’ve lost the hunger and the thirst. I’ve gotten so used to church and all the rituals, I’ve been going through the motions, but I haven’t been desperate for God. I haven’t been loving Him with all my heart and my soul. The funny thing is that nearly every time, when I’ve analysed the situation, it hasn’t been the quality of the teaching on Sundays that’s the problem. Not even my old-fashioned Bible translation or a boring worship team at church. It always seems to come back to me. It’s when I stop giving out and passing things on, I somehow seem to get all clogged up to the point where I can’t receive any more.

We can all go through phases like that, but some of us get stuck there! I call people in this situation ”first-commandment-Christians” or ”just-me-and-God-Christians”. They’ve understood that they have to give God everything they’ve got, and they attend all the meetings, pray the prayers, sing the songs, go to camp and learn the liturgy. But after a while, they start to get so full they start saying stuff like ”I’ve heard all that before”, ”youth group’s boring”, ”I don’t need to go to church”.

Matthew 10:8 says that we’ve received freely and that we need to give freely. I sincerely believe that there’s a point in our Christian walk where we’ve heard so much , seen so much, and experienced so much that it’s almost like we don’t have room for any more. But when we start loving our neighbour and giving out, we create a big space on the inside and suddenly find ourselves hungry and thirsty again.

This is another type of believer. I call these ones ”first-and-second-commandment-Christians” or ”me-and-God-and-someone-else-Christians”. These guys have realised that they can’t keep it all to themselves, and tapped into the secret that when you give of what you’ve got, it’ll create a hole in you that needs filling and you’ll find yourself hungry again. Not only will you be helping someone else, but you’ll get your own life with God going!

Everything God gives you isn’t just for you, but for someone else. Everything He does in your life can be shared with the people around you, and a great way to start giving out is to get together with the other Christians in your school or college and start a group focused on outreach and prayer. Together you can take the message of Jesus to your classmates and start giving out a bit of what God’s given to you!

For more information on how to start a Christian school group or get resources and support for your CU or lunch-club, go to www.newgeneration.co.uk