Junkies

Have you ever known or perhaps lived with a junkie of some sort? There are all types. Junk food, fishing (ahem), music, TV, video game, cell phone... just about anything you can imagine, a person can get hooked on to an extreme. The 'junkie' trait is the kind of thing your spouse should discover before marriage. Granted that most of us are junkies at something, even if it's something tame. Being a junkie can be hard for others to cope with.

I love to fish. I am probably not as much of a fishing junkie as some other folks I know, but it's plenty-enough to make my wife uncomfortable IF she doesn't like fishing. Fortunately, I chose wisely, and my wife is a fisher-woman. My love for fishing does not tend to make her uneasy. I could attend the most hard-core fishing convention in the world and TOTALLY enjoy myself. If everyone there ate, drank, and slept fishing, fishing boats, fishing rods, fishing lures.... I'd be right at home. This is the way of junkies.

I'm also a Jesus junkie. I don't get tired of talking about Him, hearing about Him, trying to do what He did... it's all fascinating and captivating and consuming and contagious! If you want my attention, talk about fishing or Jesus. If you don't, talk about baseball or work.

But now these hard questions. How is it that so many Christians get uncomfortable when you really start talking about being like Jesus? Why would anyone who claims to know Him get tired of talking about Him? I see it. I see it a lot. Some folks don't like extremes of any kind, and being like Jesus is RADICAL. It's divisive. Being like Jesus - or trying to - may cause contention in the home or the family. A prophet isn't accepted in his home town... or home, often enough. Familiarity does breed contempt. "Look at him, trying to be all Jesus-like!" Yes... trying.

I buy Bill Dance lures so I can catch fish like Bill. For some reason people think that is okay, but if I sign on to emulate Jesus, even self-proclaimed Christians think I'm being pretentious.

So far, this post has been fairly judgmental (let's call it exhortational, not a word but go with it) - but mostly it's to me. The reason I think I know what people are thinking is because... it's what I've thought. I now understand, though, that a true junkie is going to make a non-junkie uncomfortable with their passion. What's the saying? "A Jesus-freak is someone who loves Jesus more than you do." Ouch.

Got Passion?

2Ki 13:18-19 LITV
(18) And he said, Take the arrows. And he took them up. And he said to the king
of Israel, Strike the earth. And he struck three times, and stopped.
(19) And the man of God was angry with him, and said, By striking five or six
times, then you would have stricken Syria until it was finished; but now, you
shall strike Syria three times.

Elisha was the prophet who administered this test to Joash, King of Israel.
Don't you think this was confusing to the king? After all, there weren't very
good instructions to the test. As a great teacher said, the greatest tests
aren't the ones we know we are going through. The greatest tests are the ones
where we live seemingly insignificant moments out of our heart and we discover
what we're composed of in the process. Joash's problem was that he was a leader
without passion. Everything he did showed it, and everyone who followed him was
affected by it.

Could it have been that even if Joash had taken a mighty swing and had broken
all the arrows on the ground with one strike, the prophet might have said, "Just
as you broke the arrows you shall break all those who stand in your path." It
was a matter of passion. There was none.

We long for significance in the Kingdom of Heaven, but we are afraid to get
passionate for fear of public opinion. We value our reputations more than we
value the work of God (this is a form of idolatry). Is it any wonder we live
lives of meaningless influence, or none at all? If you were the Lord of the
Universe, how much would you entrust to 'you'?