The Convenience of Living for Jesus

You hear it all the time...

Why does it matter if I _________?  Jesus did!

And you can fill that blank in with pretty much anything.  From anything as simple as wearing long hair, to the one we've all heard: drinking.  

Without losing track and heading down the long road of a rant, here's what I think is wrong with this mindset.

We want to do _________ because we like doing it.  It may be looked down on in our society, but John Brown-it, if we can find a way to justify it, why not?  And what better way of justifying it than by proclaiming that Jesus did it!       

There's absolutely nothing wrong with modeling our lives after Jesus, and there's no better way of doing so than to model His actions.  But why don't we spend more time modeling the hard actions of Jesus' life?  Why not preach the Word of God to the world?  Why not love those who we view as unlovable? 

No.  We're more worried about formulating "sound" arguments for why we can do _________.  Instead of us being formed in God's image, we try to reverse it and form Jesus in our image so that we can justify our actions.  

My question is a simple one: why?  Why do we think we can pick and choose which parts of Jesus we like and throw out the parts we don't?  That's called being a lukewarm Christian.  Nothing in scripture lends to this mindset being accurate.  In fact, Jesus Himself stated the obvious.

15 I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. 16 So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of My mouth. Rev 3:15-16 (HCSB)

As my pastor said in a sermon weeks ago...

Do we change our desires to fit our theology, or do we change our theology to fit our desires?