Okay, right now I want you to stop and think of as many slogans for products that you can. Don’t continue reading until you have taken at least 30 seconds to do it. Ready, set, go!
How many were you able to come up with? My bet is quite a few. We see slogans all over the place all day, everyday.
Here are a few of the most common ones:
- Melts in your mouth, not your hand(M&M’s)
- It’s everywhere you want to be(Visa)
- The Ultimate Driving Machine(BMW)
- Just do it(Nike)
- It keeps going, and going, and going…(Energizer Batteries)
- You’re in good hands with…(Allstate)
Slogans are a marketing strategy used to draw in the consumer. It’s pretty clever if you think about it… I mean, how often do you find yourself humming one of those stupid tacky songs you hear in commercials? I do it all the time, it’s really annoying, but also very effective. I have the phone number for like 12 different mattress stores memorized because of those songs…
Now I want you to take a minute and think of a slogan for Christianity. Go ahead take a minute, this one is a more difficult one.
What’d you come up with? My bet is that it wasn’t the same one that Jesus had…(mine wasn’t even close…)
Jesus’ slogan for his followers can be summed up in these three words:
Come and Die.
You’re probably thinking ‘That’s a horrible slogan!’ and you’re right, in today’s day and age we sugar coat everything. We will twist the truth so that it will sound the best way that it possibly can. We are all about the sale and getting as many people on our bandwagon as we can. You see, if you read the Bible Jesus didn’t care about how many people he had following him, He didn’t care if he offended people. Jesus didn’t want a huge FAN base, he just wanted FOLLOWERS.
I just finished reading this book called ‘not a fan’ by Kyle Idleman. It took me two days to read and in two days my entire relationship with God changed… It really challenged me to not be a fan of Christ but to be a truly committed follower. When I say Jesus’ slogan for Christianity is ‘come and die’ I don’t mean that he literally wants you to die. What I’m saying is that God wants you to die to yourself. He wants you to completely deny yourself as a person and only concern yourself with the things of eternal value. I feel like a lot of times we aren’t always told what a HUGE commitment giving your life to Christ is. You hear the salvation story about how Christ died for your sins and you need to acknowledge that you are a sinner and surrender your life to him. Now don’t get me wrong that is SOOOOOOOOOO important and it is SOOOOOO amazing that we get this opportunity! We serve an awesome God, but I feel like a lot of times we are so scared of turning someone off that we skip the fine print. The part that says we literally have to die to ourselves and our own desires. We have to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily. Now to anyone who isn’t a follower that sounds horrible. I mean a cross is such an ugly symbol. It represents sin and death, and not just any death but a brutal, painful, torturous death…. why would I want to take that up daily?
Here’s something I bet you never expected me to say…You shouldn’t want to. Even Jesus himself asked up until the very last second that he be spared from the horrors of the cross. Jesus never said that being his follower would be easy. He flat out told us that we would be scoffed at, bullied, rejected, and cast out because of his name. The thing that is soooooo important though is that we don’t let that stop us from dying to ourselves and following Christ. We are all sinners. No one is perfect. No one. We need to recognize this because a lot of times we become apathetic in our faith because we compare ourselves to fellow ‘fans’ and say “Well, I’m better off that that guy so I’m fine.” You are not fine. I am not fine. I am a broken vessel of Christ.
Another thing about ‘fans’ that is dangerous is that it is so much easier to be swayed a certain way. For example, anyone who knows me, knows that I am a HUGE fan of Tim Tebow. I’ve read his book, I can tell you his testimony, I have his jersey. I downloaded the Broncos app on my phone, and then he was traded to the jets. Guess what I did? I deleted my broncos app, only wore my jersey to bed, and I downloaded the Jets app and bought Tebow’s Jets jersey. I appeared to be a fan of the Denver Broncos, but in actuality I didn’t know a thing about them. I didn’t know how brutal the practices were, I didn’t know way it felt like to be nailed by a huge football player opposing me. I didn’t understand the pain and the sacrifice that went into being a part of the Broncos. If I had participated in the practices and if I had played in the games I would have been way more upset when they lost, I wouldn’t have given up on them either. If I understood the sacrifice I would’ve believed in my team until the end. Do you see where I am going here? The same thought process can be applied to our faith. The ‘fans’ of Jesus can quote Bible verses about all the miracles that He did and they can tell you all about the man Jesus and how amazing he was. They can tell you his ‘team stats’ and his ‘personal stats’, but they don’t actually understand the price and the sacrifice that comes with following Jesus. As soon as hardship hits them, they will walk away and join another team. A true follower of Christ is on the field, running those suicides all day. They are sweating blood with Jesus right before the crucifixion. They are going out and sharing the gospel of Christ with anyone that will hear. They aren’t afraid of rejection, they aren’t afraid of dying for the name of Christ because they understand the urgency of the message. They understand the eternal value of the soul and the urgency that the world know of Christ’s forgiveness and eternal life. It’s this all consuming love and passion that makes you want to shout out his salvation from the rooftops.
Being a follower does not just mean that you go out and share the gospel, it also requires a complete surrender. Any ‘fan’ will come up to you and smack talk about why there team is better than yours and why you shouldn’t be a fan your team, you should be a fan of their team. If you are a follower, you will give up everything to Christ. He literally has complete control over everything in your life. You DIE to yourself. You DENY your actual existence so that Christ can be glorified. That’s a lot. I mean you choose Jesus over money. You choose Jesus over the type of entertainment you enjoy. You choose Jesus over addiction. You choose Jesus over family. You choose Jesus over friends, popularity, social status, ect… He isn’t just your first priority, He should be your only priority. There shouldn’t even be a close second. There shouldn’t even be a second. He should be sooooo important in your life that nothing else can even come close to comparing to him.
Christianity is not an attractive lifestyle at all, but Jesus didn’t intend for it to be. All he wants are devoted followers who understand what it means to be a follower of Christ. He wants people wholly surrendered to him. He wants them to serve him wherever, whenever, whatever. He wants all the control in life. ALL of it. Come and die. Come and die and find life.
My name is Becky Schwarz and I am no longer a fan.
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