Have you ever thought about how you view God? Does He take center stage, or does He often fade into the background unless you’re in trouble?
Leonard Sweet says that life falls into place when Jesus gets first place in our lives. But how do we live with Jesus in first place?
“The truth of Christianity is more in the prepositions than in the propositions. God’s middle name is with. God is with us. God wants to be with every single one of us and wants us to go out and be with every single person that we can.”
Leonard goes as far to say that our ultimate witness is actually our withness.
“How are you with people? We have a God who wants to be with us. A God who became human to be with us. The Gospel story is an incredible story.”
While it’s important to be with people. We must stand out in the crowd.
“Part of the essence of being in God’s image is that you don’t always fit into the time zones of the culture. We have Western time here, they had a whole other understanding of time in Jesus’ day than we do. Jesus is in tune with the Holy spirit. Sometimes that leads you into rhythms that conflict with the rhythms of the culture.”
When God is in the forefront of our lives, Len says we can expect to be on a different wavelength then those around us who do not share our faith.
“If you’re on mission, sometimes the wavelengths of the Spirit will conflict with the wavelengths of the culture.”
As Christians we are called to be in the world but not of the world. We are called to be with the world, but not be conformed to it.
Leonard Sweet is a scholar of American culture; a semiotician who “sees things the rest of us do not see, and dreams possibilities that are beyond most of our imagining”; a preacher; and a bestselling author who communicates the gospel with a signature bridging of the worlds of faith, academe, and popular culture.
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