07-08-12

how to live life and be a christian too

You can’t!

There’s no dichotomy. There is no room for liv­ing life and try­ing to fit Chris­tian­ity into it. Chris­tian­ity demands every­thing and is the whole of your life. It was never promised to be fun or easy. It is a road of many sac­ri­fices. There is a cost, but the eter­nal rewards far out­weigh the tem­po­ral ful­fill­ment that this life offers.

…that’s what I keep try­ing to remind myself of any­way. It’s hard to find ful­fill­ment in Christ rather than the idea of Christ. The lat­ter leaves us dis­ap­pointed and search­ing elsewhere.

In the words of a dear friend tonight, he says, “I’m not say­ing you can’t have fun. I’m say­ing fun isn’t a bib­li­cal con­cept. What is a bib­li­cal con­cept is life and death.”

That’s heavy. That’s truth. That’s reality.

Andrew is a 20-​​something Chris­t­ian who strives to live a very sim­ple lifestyle after real­iz­ing the van­ity of rush­ing around and all the mate­ri­al­ism of our soci­ety. He wants to squeeze the most out of life and live each day extra­or­di­nar­ily through sim­ple means. This blog is a run­ning com­men­tary of his jour­ney of faith and prac­ti­cal­ity, and how your life can go from nor­mal to extra­or­di­nary too! Andrew is the author and edi­tor of Live [Sim­ply] Free, and con­tin­ues on the jour­ney of declut­ter­ing and sim­pli­fy­ing his life. Fol­low him on Twit­ter @Andrew_Randazzo.
how to live life and be a christian too
Andrew Randazzo
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Posted by Andrew Randazzo » Ponderings
  • Suzanne Reed

    “For who­ever wants to save his life will lose it, but who­ever loses his life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:25

    The Bible may not use the word “fun” (what is the ety­mol­ogy of ‘fun’ any­way?) but I run across ‘joy’ pretty often.

    “There’s no dichotomy. There is no room for liv­ing life and try­ing to fit Chris­tian­ity into it. ” So, so true. Or, when you’re not liv­ing in Christ, you’re not really liv­ing, eh?

    • http://livesimplyfree.com/ Andrew Ran­dazzo

      Ya you’re right. We run across “joy” a lot. We expe­ri­ence fun because of the cul­ture and coun­try we live in, but there’s Chris­tians in other coun­tries who are locked behind bars and some expe­ri­enc­ing tor­ture who haven’t had fun in years but I guar­an­tee you they’re expe­ri­enc­ing joy every day that they rest in Christ.

      Good thoughts. Thanks.

  • Jen­nifer G

    I was read­ing a blog post a few days ago, where a blog­ger men­tioned a cor­re­la­tion between min­i­mal­ism and Chris­tian­ity. One of her com­menters actu­ally said the bible doesn’t teach that we are to deny our­selves things, so we shouldn’t get hung up on get­ting rid of stuff to improve our spir­i­tual lives. I didn’t reply to her (I prob­a­bly should have), but the first thing that came to mind was Matthew 16:24 “
    Then Jesus said to his dis­ci­ples, “If any­one would come after me, he must deny him­self and take up his cross and fol­low me.”

    • http://livesimplyfree.com/ Andrew Ran­dazzo

      I would tend to dis­agree with the blog­ger you men­tioned to some extent. How­ever, there’s a bal­ance. Back in the peak of the min­i­mal­ist fad a few years ago, own­ing 100 things or less was the ulti­mate goal. There’s no set num­ber of things a Chris­t­ian can or can’t have. What’s at the heart of the Matthew 16 pas­sage and what’s most impor­tant is being will­ing to sur­ren­der any­time and any­thing when God speaks.