So... You Want to Have It YOUR Way??!!
Chances are many of you remember back in the day when Burger King opened up a world of options and possibilities to us fast food customers by telling us “Have it your way”. Oh, you remember the commercial: “Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us…”
And the church hasn’t been the same since.
Nowhere in His Word does the Lord God say He’s OK with us having it our way and arranging our lives however we feel is best. There probably won’t be many amens right here, but listen: you CANNOT be a Christian and do whatever your heart desires. There are so many levels to such a statement that we don’t have space for right here, but it is accurate. Still, there is a serious misconception that seems to be pervasive in the 21st century Christian church: the misconception is that God's grace excuses our decisions to continually disregard God’s instructions. In other words, too many of us believe that Christianity is a “have it your way” proposition, complete with a get out of jail free card called grace. Not so!
In practice, Christianity is not simply a set of suggestions that would be really cool for all of us to do; no, Christianity DEMANDS some things from us. And it demands these things unashamedly. Most importantly, it demands change from us – change into what God says we should be, not what we think we should be…and definitely not what current culture would have us to be. Christ Himself told us as much: “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34).
Please don’t be fooled by theology which suggests that grace removes the need for us to confront and own up to sin in our lives, sin being defined simply as “missing the mark”. Nor does grace relieve us of the need for repentance – that is, turning away from our sin and back toward God AND His ways. It’s true that Jesus stopped the stoning of the woman caught in adultery in John 8 (judgment of her sin) and did not condemn her (consign her to damnation); BUT, at the end of that passage, He still required her to adhere to what He (the living Word, and by extension, the logos/written Word) expects, by saying “…go, and sin no more.” Following the latest methods of having "it" our own way can wind up being little more than conforming to the way of current culture and people.