Ben Pettit

Sitting here in the silence of now. I feel as if I am suppose to love as hard as I can, right now. Tonight.

I often need to discern the difference between intense ambition and passion with anxiousness. But alas, I still feel it, in the depth of my soul. It’s a stirring in unrest. It’s not a movement where 16 to 25 year old boys wear girl jeans, tasteless hair cuts, and listen to whiny rock. I’m not talking about a music genre or dressing classification commonly called “emo“. I’m speaking of something so much deeper. Much greater. An emotion that cannot be contained. If I hide it away in my heart it will scream out of my bones until I am weakened and surrender to it.

The most powerful word I have heard, other than scripture, was on a Monday night of a Monday through Friday summer church camp. Most pastors wait until Thursday to have “cry” night. Cry night is the night where the gospel message is driven home. When this certain pastor was asked Monday night after the service why he preached the token evangelistic salvation message on Monday, the first night of camp, he responded “Because as far as I know, today could have been our last day together”.

I’m not sure if it is our Americanized Christianity or what, but feel in America there is not an urgency to share the gospel of Christ. Sure, an influence, but not an urgency. I mean an urgency for instance where we are screaming in the phone “911, I’ve been in an accident. I am losing a lot of blood and I am turned upside down.” A need to be healed, restored, RESCUED. Don’t you know, don’t you realize? Jesus paid for you and I. For our every thing.

20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galations 2:20

On the contrary in China for instance, to be a Christian means you give up everything. In China there are no colors of the church wall to complain about. There is no power struggle of budget allocation between ministries of the church. Rather, they meet in secret. If you become a disciple in China, you lose your inheritence, your family, and probably most of your friends. Your life as you knew it, is no longer. When you become a Christian in American, what did you give up?