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Key Bible Verse: "If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it" (Mark 8:35). Bonus Reading: John 12:20-26

Vaccinations that insert bits of a dangerous disease into my body leave me leery. Not to worry, doctors explain. I'm being exposed to weak or dead elements of the disease so my body will produce antibodies to combat it.

This is what happened to many Christians. They have been vaccinated with dead or weak forms of Christianity. The antibodies they've built up combat the powerful, radical contagion of authentic Christianity, leaving none of the severe symptoms of the virulent, revolutionary strain that kills the old way we live and gives birth to a new life that's a carrier of the infection.

When Jesus said, "Follow me," he wasn't talking about trailing him to a Sunday school class. He was saying, "love your enemies"; "pray for those who abuse you"; "if your eye leads you to sin, gouge it out"; "love me more than you love your children or parents"; "confess your sins openly to each other."

If we tone down Christ's drastic demands, we aren't following him. Many churches are no more than inoculation clinics. People go there to receive weekly vaccinations so they won't come down with the real thing.

—John Sartelle in TableTalk

My Response: Can non-Christians live next to me with no fear of catching what I've got?

Thought to Apply: It's not our responsibility to make people Christians, but to help people decide to follow Jesus and his radical message. The New Testament writers only use Christian three times but disciple on 269 occasions!  —Tom Getman (relief agency official)

Adapted from TableTalk (9/06) by permission.

Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Deliver me, Lord, from remaining a casual Christian. I'm ready to become the radical disciple Jesus called for.

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