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To follow Jesus is seriously ridiculous.
He didn't take a salary.
He ignored trends.
He made wine out of dirty handwash.
It's so ridiculous that it might look as radical as
this this:
THE VISION
So this guy comes up to me and says What’s the
vision? What’s the big idea?
I open my mouth and words come out like this:
The vision? The vision is Jesus – obsessively,
dangerously, undeniably Jesus. The vision is an army of young people. You
see bones? I see an army. And they are free from materialism. They laugh at
9 – 5 little prisons. They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on
Tuesday. They know the meaning of The Matrix,
The Way the West was Won. They are mobile like
the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport. People write
their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence. They are
free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.
What is the vision?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes
children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity
long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the
best. It is dangerously pure. Light flickers from every secret motive,
every private conversation. It loves people away from their suicide leaps,
their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the
cause. A million times a day its soldiers choose to lose that they might
one day win the great ‘Well done.’ Such heroes are as radical
on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don’t need fame from names.
Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and
again: ‘COME ON!’
And this is the sound of the underground – the
whisper of history in the making foundations shaking. Revolutionaries
dreaming once again – mystery is scheming in whispers –
conspiracy is breathing . . .
This is the sound of the underground, and the army is
discipl(in)ed. Young people who beat their bodies into submission. Every
soldier would take a bullet for his comrade in arms. The tattoo on their
back boasts ‘for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.’
Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes. Winners. Martyrs.
Who can stop them? Can hormones hold them back? Can failure succeed? Can
fear scare them or death kill them?
And the generation prays like a dying man with groans
beyond talking, with warrior cries, sulfuric tears and with great barrow
loads of laughter! Waiting. Watching: 24-7-365.
Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rights
and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting
essentials.The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold
them. Peer pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late-night
parties before the cockerel cries. They are incredibly cool, dangerously
attractive inside. On the outside? They hardly care. They wear clothes like
costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide. Would they
surrender their image or their popularity? They would lay down their very
lives – swap seats with the man on death row – guilty as hell.
A throne for an electric chair.
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With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless
nights and fruitless days they pray as if it all depends on God and live as
if it all depends on them.Their DNA chooses Jesus. (He breaths out, they
breath in.) Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with
Jesus. Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.
Don’t you hear them coming? Herald the weirdos!
Summon the losers and the freaks. Here come the frightened and forgotten
with fire in their eyes. They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow,
mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension. Their prayers
summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it
will come easily; it will come soon. How do I know? Because this is the
longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of
God. My tomorrow is His today. My distant hope is His 3D. And my feeble,
whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking
great ‘Amen!’ from countless angels, from heroes of the faith,
from Christ Himself. And He is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed.
Attributed to Billy Kennedy from Sublime Community
Church in Southampton, England
Darian Kovacs – campusfire ministry program manager
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association of Canada
1.800.293.3717 dkovacs@samaritan.org
Come by: 15128 27B Ave, Surrey, BC V4P 1P2
Call us: 604.317.7667 or toll free: 1.866.768.3473
Donate online at: CanadaHelps.com
http://campusfire.com/canadafire
Options Winter 2009
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