The Christians Hour

Guest (Male): It’s time now for the Christian’s Hour. Welcome to our weekly broadcast filled with teachings straight from God’s word. The Christian’s Hour is a ministry of Gospel Broadcasting Mission, where our goal is to share the truth of the good news of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth through radio and media until all have heard.

When we look at our culture and the times we live in, it’s hard to be shocked by much anymore. We see and hear so much from around the world that very little truly surprises us. It may stir an emotion or two, but rarely does it leave us shocked. In today’s message, Ben Cachiaras, lead pastor of Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, Maryland, reveals a powerful truth: that a life lived like Jesus is still deeply shocking.

Friends, we are called to live like Jesus in the world around us. We are in the world, but not of the world. Jesus gave us clear instructions on how to live. The question is, how are we doing living them out? Are we faithful? Are we obedient? Because when we are, we will stand out. It will be different. It will be shocking. Here is Ben to explain more.

Ben Cachiaras: I want to begin by telling you a name you’ve never heard of: Karl Barth. Probably you’ve never heard of that name, but Karl Barth was probably the most prominent theologian of the 20th century. He was known for so many things, but one of the things he always said is that if a preacher steps into the pulpit, they ought to have a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

Don’t you love that? If you think about the importance of that, a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other, if all you have is a Bible and you read it, study it, preach it, and talk about it all day long, but you never really get around to how it connects to the real world, the one we actually live in, it falls short. It’s not enough. What does this timeless word have to say about what I’m going through right now in my family, in my business, and on the street where I live? Jesus didn’t stay in heaven. He came and he pitched his tent right among us. The Word became flesh, so we have to have both.

At the same time, if all you’ve got is the news of the day and you’re up on all the trends and you’re relevant and trendy with the times, but you’re not guided through those things by the timeless Word of God and you don’t know how to think about what’s going on in the trends and the newspaper based on the changeless, powerful, true Word of God, then you’re just going to be swept along by whatever the latest trend is, wherever the wind blows you.

So we always want to bring the real Jesus and his real Word to the real world. That’s the job of every one of us, not just a preacher. It reminds me of what the scriptures say about the men of Issachar. In First Chronicles chapter 12, it was a real dicey time in Israel’s history and they were all concerned, like, "What’s going on? What are we going to do?" God sent them some guys called the men of Issachar. Do you know what it says about them? It says they understood the signs of the times and they knew what Israel should do next.

We want to be like that, being able to understand the signs of the times, understand what’s going on in our real world, and know what it means to be the people of God in this particular moment in time. We’re always asking that question, “What should we do here, Lord?” At one level, Jesus has answered that question once and for all already for all of us, for everyone who wants to be his disciple.

Before he offered up his life on the cross, some of his last words spoke very clearly about the mission that he wanted every one of us to be about. You can find some of these words in Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 to 20. Here is what Jesus said. Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority.” In other words, the Father’s put me in charge. What I’m about to say is not a suggestion. This is not optional. If you want to wear my name and call yourself a Christian, this is what you need to be about.

Then he said it: “Therefore go and make disciples.” What’s a disciple? A disciple is simply someone who says, “I want to follow Jesus. I want to know Jesus. I want to love Jesus. I want to have him in my life. I want to obey him. I want to follow him.” Everyone is being discipled by someone. We are all being shaped. A disciple is someone who says, “I want to let Jesus shape me. I want to let Jesus speak into my life.”

Jesus says, “Listen guys, trust me on this. I’m what people are looking for. I’m the way, the truth, and the life. Your job is to get out there and help them sign on and see the truth through your own life that they will say, 'I want to follow him too.' That’s your job. Ready, go.” Who should we do this to, Jesus? Well, of all nations, he says. This is for everyone. Old people, young people, people far away, people close up, people I don’t like, everyone.

As he talks about making disciples, he breaks it down into two parts. He says if you want to make a disciple, there are two things involved. First, you have to baptize them, and then you have to teach them. First we baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That’s the entry point. That’s how someone gets started. You get washed and cleaned up and put on your feet and sent out. It’s the beginning, it's the birth, but you don’t stop once you get started. That's a mistake some people make. They became a Christian and they stopped.

Jesus says, “No, no, no. The way you do it is you baptize them and then you teach them.” You have to help them understand who I really am, not the caricature of Jesus that’s on TV. They have to learn to follow the real me so they learn to keep growing. If you respond like, “Wow, that sounds like a lot, Jesus,” he says, “Don’t worry, I got you. I’ll be with you always, right up to the end. I’ll give you my spirit.”

Those are some of Jesus’ last words. We call it the Great Commission. It’s his mission, but he’s invited us into it. You can do it too with me. We’ll do a commission together. This is God’s plan to save the planet, one by one inviting people into his kingdom agenda by understanding who Jesus is. Now, that’s what we call the mission. Pretty good idea to borrow your mission from Jesus. I think that’s pretty safe. We’ll just use his.

What, then, does that look like? That’s the important question. If a disciple is someone who loves God, loves people, and serves the world, how do we live that out in this particular moment of time? Well, that’s what we call vision. These times that we’re living in are super interesting, aren’t they? Super interesting times we’re living in.

If I were to sum up the moment of time that we’re living in, this cultural moment, from a spiritual perspective, I would say two things are true at once, and they seem contradictory, but they’re not. We’re living in a time of resistance and revival at the same time. Some in our culture are resisting God. They’re pulling back from religion. They’re retreating from faith, turning away from God. It’s very real. It’s all around.

At the same time, there are winds of revival blowing when other people are turning to God. We live at an intersection of that very thing right now. As we seek to advance God’s agenda, be about the kingdom, and be for Jesus and what he cares about, if you’re a Christian and you’re trying to live in this world as a Christian, you feel this too, don’t you? You feel headwinds that are blowing directly against us, making it harder to live like a Christian and to be a Christian in this world.

Yet the crazy thing is, at the same time, there are some tailwinds that are kicking up that are helping us along a little bit. If I asked you right now, what are some of the things in your life that you observe that are making it harder to live out your faith every day? You could tell me some things. There's a bunch of them. You’d say to me, “I don’t know. Compared to years ago, I got a lot more friends that don’t believe in God at all or they don’t go to church at all.”

I got a lot of people whose parents grew up going to church, but the next generation, they just don’t really care about it. I got a whole group of people that think Christianity is irrelevant. A whole bunch of people that have had such a bad church experience, church hurt maybe, that they’ve dropped out and they’re deconstructing their faith. They’ve given up maybe not on God, but on church.

Some people are believing that Christians are bad for the world. There’s a bunch of anti-Christian rhetoric out there at the university and other places. Some people will tell you it’s unscientific or anti-intellectual to believe in God. There’s a lot of this stuff that’s out there. Headwinds. There’s a growing disinterested on the part of some, disdain and disgust on the part of others.

You’ve all heard about the Nones. Over the last two decades, more and more people, when you ask them, “What’s your religious affiliation?” they say, “None.” I’m not even going to fake it anymore. I used to be a bad Baptist. I’m not even going to pretend anymore. I’m just going to say none, because it doesn’t matter. And the younger you are, the more likely that you don’t go to any church or have any expressed faith.

The issues that the world has before us right now are super complex, and the answers that Christian viewpoint has brought for 2,000 years are less and less popular. Are you feeling all this? We’re not the home team anymore. We’re like the away team. So all you’re going to get is maybe one little clap up in the stands and it’s your mom.

There’s resistance, there’s headwinds, and yet, here’s the thing about the signs of the times. New winds are blowing. There are the winds of God and I dare say the winds of revival and renewal. These refreshing tailwinds are creating a spiritual hunger. It’s as if all the pain of COVID was a wake-up call and all that isolation and the mental health challenges and all that stuff just ran up against a wall. It left people feeling emptiness, and now in that disillusionment, they’re asking, “There’s got to be something more, right?”

A whole lot of people are sensing that God is on the move in this moment, especially a lot of young people who are open and hungry and searching and a lot of them are turning to Jesus Christ. As it says in the book of Esther, we believe that God has perfectly positioned us, this church, in this place at this moment, for such a time as this. This is our moment.

Friends, as we enter our third century, 201 and beyond, we really feel the call of God on us is clear. We’re here to shock the world, not in a dumb way. Anybody can shock people in a dumb way. We’re here not to do this on our own, but by ordinary everyday ways we lift up Jesus. The real, compelling, winsome picture of Jesus. Most people don’t know Jesus, even people that think they know Jesus don’t know the real Jesus.

But Jesus said, “If I’m lifted up, I will draw people.” I’ve found that to be true in my life, that if people meet the real Jesus, he is so winsome and compelling. So friends, we have to know Jesus and then show Jesus. We have to love Jesus and then lift Jesus. And that will shock the world. It will bash stereotypes. It will surprise people. We are the body of Christ, so we’re supposed to look like him if we’re going to lift him.

If we’re going to really lift Jesus like never before above all the noise, it will shock people in the best ways. Everyone’s got an opinion of Jesus and it’s part of the reason that so many people are still turned off to the very thing that they need the most, which is Jesus, because they haven’t tasted the real thing. If I said to an average five-year-old boy, “Hey, would you like to try some crème brûlée?” he’s not going to have any idea what I’m talking about.

Most five-year-olds would not understand. He’s going to assume that sounds gross, it’s probably adult food, it’s probably yucky, it’s medicine, it’s vegetables, I’m not interested, and he would miss out. But if I showed him the crème brûlée and I said, “Would you like to try some yummy vanilla pudding? But it’s better because there’s sugar on top and cinnamon on fire,” and then give him a spoon and let him taste some, he’s probably going to be pleasantly surprised, shocked you could say, with how good it is in a good way.

That’s our vision, to shock the world, let people taste and see that the Lord is good after all. They don't know that. They got this crème brûlée idea in their head. We got to let them taste and see the real thing. When you talk to your average friend, show me your friend who doesn’t know God and use the word Christianity or Christian, Lord knows what’s in their mind about that anymore. Or I say God or even Jesus or church. Some bad, yucky thing I’m not interested in.

But when people meet the real Jesus, he’s so stunning, so beautiful, so compelling. He’s got answers. He’s winsome. He’s warm. And when he is lifted up, when we love him and lift him up, he will draw people to himself. That’s what the world needs in this cultural moment more than ever. That means we have to act like the real Jesus and lift him up. Trust me, Jesus was not what anyone expected. He was shocking. Everything about him was shocking.

They were looking for someone to come from God, they wanted a Messiah. When he showed up, they’re like, “Well, it can’t be him.” He shocked them. They wanted a kingdom and a king, but when he told them about what kind of kingdom he had, they’re like, “Well, not that kind of kingdom. I want a kick-butt kingdom that will beat up the Romans.” He kept talking about another kind.

And then when he said, “I’m going to be your savior,” they’re like, “Great, we want a savior,” and then he died on a cross. They’re like, “Well, that’s shocking.” Then he’s like, “I’m back!” and they’re like, “Well, that’s shocking.” Then he picked a bunch of low-lifers and losers to carry the mission forward, that’s shocking. And then he invited you into it. That’s shocking! Everything about Jesus is shocking.

So that means we have to be different. We have to figure this out. We have to be different than the world. Romans 12 puts it this way: “Don’t copy the behavior and the customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” That’s what it means to be a disciple. You don’t shock the world by acting like everybody else. We have to be different. There’s a different kingdom, a different savior, a different Jesus.

Because friends, I can tell you something you already know. Normal isn’t working. Normal is stressed out and frenzied and shallow relationships and angry with everybody all the time and self-absorbed and spiritually confused about so many things and getting to the end of your life and wondering if you made any difference. That’s normal. And getting rattled by everything in the world so deeply that you’re just negative and fearful all the time.

Normal isn’t working. You’re called to be weird. Some of you got a head start, let’s be honest. But not weird in a dumb way, weird in ways that the world will consider strange and abnormal because it’s shocking, because that’s how Jesus was and you’re called to live like him. That’s how you lift him up. You want to shock the world? Live like Jesus. Try it.

Like maybe even in the last few days, maybe if we could just quote Jesus: “Love your enemies.” What if we tried that? There’s an idea. Show radical love to someone who’s not very lovely. That’s shocking in this world, isn’t it? You want to shock the world? Choose forgiveness when everyone’s telling you to get revenge.

You want to be shocking? There's a bunch of shocking people I know who follow Jesus and they have found contentment in life and they value simplicity in relationships with God and other people rather than wasting their life chasing status symbols and comfort and pleasure. People are like, “What is going on with you?” That’s shocking.

You want to shock people? Understand that any money you have is God’s money and then use some of his money for his purposes. Live generously and open-handedly in a stingy, "spend everything on myself, hold onto all my stuff" kind of world. Most people don’t give anything to God, only their leftovers or backwash.

But God’s people, if they ever open their hands and they generously, freely give their first and best to God and we do amazing things together like we did for those teachers, it opens their hearts, it turns their heads. They’re like, “What’s going on with that?” It shocks the world. Generosity is beautiful. We follow a guy who gave away everything.

You want to shock people? Stop being bullied by the news media that tells you what you’re supposed to think about everything and let Jesus shape your brain. Let him transform your mind by renewing it with the words of truth from scripture instead of letting the algorithms of TikTok and Facebook shape our brain. We’re being discipled by Snapchat. That’d be shocking if we could step away from that.

You want to shock the world? Refuse to have your life marked by the busyness and the constant distraction that so many consider normal today. Live a balanced, sane life where you choose family and worship not as “if you have time,” but priorities in your life. Create some quiet space in your day every day to be with God, to hear from him, to pray to him. Nobody does this except weird, crazy, abnormal, shocking Christian people, and people take notice and they want what you have.

You want to shock the world? Trust what Jesus says about sexuality and sleeping around in a hookup culture. That’ll shock some people. Be faithful in marriage where adultery, porn, and cheating are as common as dog hair. If you’re dating someone, you’re in a relationship, and you value them as someone who’s created in the image of God and not just a body to do stuff with, you’ll shock the world.

If you open your home, radical hospitality, and make time for outsiders. You plan your life, your agenda around God’s kingdom agenda rather than just having it shaped by whatever the world or the politics or the media or the university tells you to do. Shocking the world doesn’t come down to big, huge, front-page stuff that we got to do.

Jesus teaches that it’s just small little everyday kind of counter-cultural acts that we do that look like Jesus, that look like his kingdom. When you show up and you serve in Jesus’ name, you give away some of your time to someone else. When you choose joy even when your circumstances are horrible. When you let your heart feel gratitude in the midst of a culture that’s addicted to complaining and griping about everything.

If you have peace that you can’t fully explain but it’s real even in the midst of chaos. You don’t got to be an influencer with a YouTube channel. Jesus says you will influence more than you realize in everyday little tiny ways when you recognize normal is broken and that we’re called to live weird and shocking lives that trust that the kingdom of God is actually right-side up, not upside-down like everybody else thinks it is.

That’s how we lift up Jesus. And if Jesus gets lifted up, he’ll just keep drawing more and more people to himself. So I want to just leave you with this. I have a prayer that’s been growing inside of me, and I am daring, when I find the courage, to pray it. I want to invite you to consider whether you would pray this prayer with me, only if you mean it.

More and more as I watch what’s going on all around and I hear what’s happening in other cities and watch what’s happening here in our own midst about the winds of revival, my prayer is this: God, if you’re coming by my city, don’t pass us by. You get how this works, right? God’s going to go wherever there’s open doors. The wind of the Spirit just blows.

And I’m saying to you, would you be willing to pray, “God, bring the wind of your Spirit into my life?” There’s an old spiritual we used to sing at camp: Kumbaya. It means "come by here," like someone’s praying, "Lord, I’m here, I’m ready." Are you ready to pray that prayer? Are you ready to open up your life to the Spirit of God to say, “God, come on in”?

We can’t lift up Jesus until we open up our lives to Jesus. The real Jesus, not whatever Jesus you gave your life to 100 years ago. I’m talking about the Jesus that’s alive today, standing at the door hoping you’ll open it and let his Spirit blow through. Make this personal. Are you ready for a revival in your life? Even if it messes up your hair a little bit?

We need this, you guys. And let me warn you about something. Comfortable people don’t pray for revival. Really busy people who all they can think about is "I got to get out of here to get to my next," they don’t pray for revival. You know who does? Desperate people. And we’re pretty comfortable. So if you’ve been given a gift of discomfort right now, consider it a gift from God because maybe he’s shaking things up so you can change and get to the real good stuff, which is him.

My prayer is that God’s Spirit would blow through the open door of your heart. I’m praying that we could get uncomfortable enough like a deer panting for streams of water, because we can have all the vision in the world, all the earthly success in our own personal lives, if we don’t got Jesus, if we don’t have his Spirit, we got nothing. So open the doors of your heart, let him shock you so you can start to bless others in small little humble ways that he’ll shock you with how important they turn out to be in someone’s life. With me? All right.

Guest (Male): (Singing)

I was buried beneath my shame.

Who could carry that kind of weight?

It was my tomb ’til I met you.

I was breathing but not alive.

All my failures I tried to hide.

It was my tomb ’til I met you.

You called my name, and I ran out of that grave!

Out of the darkness, into your glorious day!

You called my name, and I ran out of that grave!

Out of the darkness, into your glorious day!

Now your mercy has saved my soul.

Now your freedom is all I know.

The old made new when I met you.

You called my name, and I ran out of that grave!

Out of the darkness, into your glorious day!

You called my name, and I ran out of that grave!

Out of the darkness, into your glorious day!

I needed rescue, my sin was heavy, but chains break at the weight of your glory!

I needed shelter, I was an orphan, now you call me a citizen of heaven!

When I was broken, you were my healing, now your love is the air that I’m breathing!

I have a future, my eyes are open!

’Cause when you called my name, I ran out of that grave!

Out of the darkness, into your glorious day!

You called my name, and I ran out of that grave!

Out of the darkness, into your glorious day!

Into your glorious day!

Guest (Male): So how about you? Does your life impact people around you in ways that surprises them? Do you love in a way that’s radically different from our culture? Are you living faithfully as Jesus commanded? It’s easy to keep to ourselves and live quietly and unseen, but that’s not what we’re called to do. We are called to live lives that impact the people around us, to love our neighbors as ourselves, just as Jesus loved us.

Let that be the desire of your heart today: to live in such a way that you shock someone with the radical love of Jesus. Our thanks to Ben Cachiaras for helping us see that each of us has an important role to play in God’s kingdom here on earth. And our thanks as well to Acapella Ministries for providing today’s song of worship.

If you’d like to listen to today’s program again, visit our website at thechristianshour.org, where all of our programs are free to stream and download anytime. While you’re there, we invite you to learn more about what God is doing through our global ministry. We believe that one of the most shocking things we can do is say yes to taking the message of Jesus to some of the most difficult and hard-to-reach places in the world.

And you can be part of that. To continue this work, we rely on partners who are willing to come alongside us to pray for us, to financially support us. Would you consider joining us? Would you consider being a partner to make an eternal impact in someone’s life? You can learn more and connect with us at thechristianshour.org or by emailing us at thechristianshour@gmail.com.

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