Being "Normal"

I've spent most of my Christian life as a "Casual Christian".  It's only been the in the last couple of weeks that I've moved from being a casual christian to a normal christian.  Well what does a casual Christian even look like? you may be asking!  Lets look at the word Christian first!  Christian simply means "Little Christ" or "Follower of Christ".  I like the term "Little Christ".  Christians are people who accept the teachings of Jesus Christ, and choose to live in accordance to his teachings.  Now lets look at the word casual.  Casual means, "without definite or serious intention; careless or offhand; unconcerned."  Wow.  that doesn't sound like it goes with being a christian now does it?  But the funny thing is, is so many Christians are just like this!  We love Jesus, and He loves us.  We just stroll through our Christian life trying to be good and do good things, without actually thinking about what God really wants us to be doing.  Even active Christians can be like this.  Active as in "I'm an official member of the WWJD club and I help out at the soup kitchen".   So you help out at the local soup kitchen, that's amazing.............  so can a group of boy scouts.  I've seen movie stars doing this stuff in the tabloids too.  And don't get me started with Oprah!  Don't get me wrong,  these things are important.  Christians should be doing these things, I understand that.  But if that's the extent of your faith, you need to stop and look at what Jesus really emphasized in his teachings and his lifestyle. This is where we look at the word "normal".  Normal means, "Conforming to the standard; natural; serving to establish the standard." Natural... I like that.  Jesus is the most normal christian in the Bible.  Funny how most Christians would call his life radical!  but it wasn't.  He lived how a normal Christian should live.  He lived With Kingdom principles, and brought it with him everywhere and in everything he did.  That's normal.

     The kingdom needs to become "the normal" for us.  He taught it and lived it, so we could learn it and live it too, "the normal".  Casual Christianity isn't enough, clearly!  We need to be normal.  Or to put it differently,  the kingdom lifestyle that Jesus lived needs to become natural (aka: normal) to us.  Wow, I'm just killing the word normal here! I'll use the word natural now.  When Jesus fed five thousand people (Matt 14:13) with only five loaves of bread and two fish, that was nothing more than natural in the kingdom, when Jesus turned water into wine (John 2:1), again, only natural in the kingdom.  Bill Johnson said something really cool in one of his messages, He said "With natural treasures I can buy everyone here at church a lunch, but with the natural treasures of the Kingdom, I can buy one lunch and multiply it!"

Again, if you volunteer at a soup kitchen, that's awesome. You're going out of your way to serve others and God honors that.  I don't want anyone to think I'm bashing good deeds here.  But serve others with the intention of bringing the Kingdom to those your serving. That's what Jesus did.  That's what living normal should look like for a Christian.  What's natural in the Kingdom can be our natural way of living.  Let's step away from being casual and leave that to the boy scouts, shall we?