In high school, I was shy. I was really shy. I studied, I made good grades, but I didn’t go to parties, I didn’t drive a cool car — however, I could play the drums.
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Pastor Bruce (a couple of years ago) |
Somewhere along the way, I became drummer in a rock band. Suddenly, everyone knew my name. I wasn’t that cute, but you put a guy who is halfway cute behind a drum set, all of a sudden he becomes a whole lot cuter! That became my world.
After awhile, at these parties and dances, I found myself around all this alcohol and pot. Here I was, a young Christian, and I never once smoked anything or took a drink of anything. I wasn’t being disciplined; it just didn’t appeal to me. I was there for the music, and the fact that people knew my name.
As I went through my senior year, I knew what I had to do. I can still remember sitting in the smoke-filled National Guard Armory in Salisbury when I tried to explain to these guys that I was quitting the band. I didn’t do any of this “you know, I’m a Christian, and Jesus told me,” because I didn’t have the courage for that. I had no other reason other than I just knew that I knew. And for me, as a twelfth grade kid, I think that’s the first time I really took a step toward being a follower of Christ.
On the other end of the spectrum, Martin Luther King, Jr., when he got his Ph.D., had an opportunity to stay in the Northeast and be a professor. But he felt a nudge. It was a moral imperative, to leave the comfort of the Northeast, and to come to the dangerous world of the Southeast in states like Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, to model, and to lead. And he gave his life. It was taken from him in his obedience to what he felt like was the call of God.
Somewhere between these two stories, is you. You probably will not have to die for a decision you make, and most of you are already out of the twelfth grade. But somewhere between those two extremes is your business, and your money, and your reputation. When you really become a follower of Christ, it likely will cost you something. But you trade that for something that can never be taken away from you later.
Everybody dies of something. Or you might die for something. And that’s a really good decision.
