Cowardice, Comfort or Christlike?

We all have a choice.  We face it every single day.  We face it in every situation.  In every relationship.  In every community in which we are part of.  In every place of study or work or worship.  Will we embrace cowardice, comfort or be Christlike?

We're working through Matthew at the moment on Sunday mornings and preparing the sermon series is proving challenging.  It challenges our church culture, our family culture and my personal culture.  It continually calls me to see my cowardice and turn from it, to see my overwhelming attachment to my comfort and disavow it and my aversion to true Christlikeness and repent of it.

My cowardice is confronted as in chapter 4 Christ leaves the Judean desert when John the Baptist is arrested and goes to Galilee, not because he wants a lakeside country retreat but to go into the heart of darkness.  To go to the place knows little of God his promises and his covenants.  To go to a people who need to hear the gospel.  Will I carry to gospel deliberately into the darkest places spiritually?  As i look at an area where so few know the gospel what will I do about it.  Jesus preaches and proclaims the kingdom come and repentance needed not in the safety of a church building but beside a lake, on a mountainside, wherever the people are.  Will I?  Or will I cower in the church preaching boldly but to those who already have the light?

Secondly it confronts my comfort.  I like knowing what is coming and when it is coming.  I like having a certain shape to my day.  I like to avoid what I don't like - be that avocado's or antagonism from those who don't like Christianity or are offended by what the Bible says about sin or sexuality or identity.  Jesus is continually leaving his comfort behind, from the moment he leaves the splendour and glories of heaven to the moment he embraces the cross.  Will I?  Where are the places God wants to discomfort me in my ministry both within the church and without?

Thirdly it challenges my Christlikeness.  In short I've been reminded again and again that Jesus is Holy.  He is Immanuel - God with us and that means he is thrice holy - Holy, Holy, Holy.  He is the one who fulfils all righteousness.  He is the one who fights Satan, who resists temptation because he is Holy.  And the call to his people, to me, is to repent of my sin and trust in his holiness on my behalf, yes, and the wonder of that must never grow old because that's what causes love and devotion to well up in our hearts.  But his call is also to be Holy, that is why he preaches the beatitudes, the household rules of the family of God.  And I am reminded that my version of holiness is all too often maxed out at a slightly better than average niceness.  But Jesus is Holy for me and calls me to be holy after him as his follower.