let's rebel

"I'm a rebel, you know the kind that die in the street cause you refuse to conform, won't eat the king's meat. Christ rebelled by shunning the culture. He eatin' with sinners, givin' Pharisees ulcers. He never got married; He was broke plus homeless. Yeah, that's the God I roll with..." - Lecrae

This morning, I woke up to

this
this
this
this
this
this

headline.

I have been digging around all morning for Ri Hyon Ok's story, and if I find it, I'll post it. But even with this little bit of information, I'm honestly overwhelmed. I'm praying Christ would be our only Treasure, so real to us that we consider everything else as worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Him as Lord. And that, for His sake, we will discard everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that we could could gain Christ. (Phil 3:8) What are the chances the woman in the headlines above, executed for distributing Bibles, lived out this verse?

It's all so easy sitting comfortably in the suburbs under our umbrella of religious freedom. William Wilberforce put it this way: "Yet thus life rolls away with too many of us in a course of shapeless idleness. Its recreations constitute its chief business… amusements are multiplied, and combined, and varied, to fill up the void of a listless and languid life; and by the judicious use of these different resources, there is often a kind of sober settled plan of domestic dissipation, in which with all imaginable decency year after year wears away in unprofitable vacancy. Even old age often finds us pacing in the same round of amusements which our early youth had tracked out."

My prayer is for us to be so satisfied in the morning with His unfailing love (Ps 90:14) that our lives won't be described as “shapeless idleness,” “listless and languid," “domestic dissipation,” “unprofitable vacancy."

Paul said, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." How different would our lives be if we could say those words and mean them? Let's rebel.