Jesus Creed
Adam and Christine Jeske, at IVP’s blog, asked college students… well, here are his words but you can go to the link for his explanations:
Three weeks ago, I asked several hundred college students a question:
What is your biggest obstacle today to giving your whole life for God’s global mission?
Let me be clear, as I was that day—I wasn’t asking about dropping out of society, selling everything, and moving to Turkmenistan (although that was fair game).
Rather, I explained that giving your whole life for God’s global mission is being fully given over to God’s purposes in the world. If you’re following Jesus’ calling, you can serve God just as well as a businessperson in the U.S. as a church planter in Sri Lanka.
I had people text me their biggest obstacles to fully following Jesus (you can, too: 608-352-3263). Some answers were not very surprising: selfishness, busyness, lust, health issues, lack of self-discipline, and materialism.
But one answer stood out, named by a quarter of those responding as their biggest obstacle to giving their whole life to global mission: fear.
These students—and Christians, no less—were afraid of everything:
- Being alone
- Failing
- Being uncomfortable
- Not knowing where they’re going or what they’re doing
- Entering a new culture
- What their parents would say
- Not hearing God correctly
- Not being good enough
- Being unprepared spiritually
- Not speaking well
- Being too broken
I couldn’t believe it. Fear is the biggest obstacle to these followers of Jesus fully joining in his mission, whether here in the U.S. or anywhere in the world. How did this happen?
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