Reflections on the EFCA Challenge Conference, Part 3...

This week, I am sharing some reflections on what I experienced with nine High School students and staff as we traveled to New Orleans for the EFCA Challenge Conference. The theme of the conference was "Everything is New" and focused on the fact the Jesus life, death, and resurrection changes everything.

Yesterday, I shared what Bryan McWhite challenged us with from the second chapter of a letter that is recorded for us in our Bibles called the book of Colossians. Today, I would like to share with you what the third speaker, Eric Mason, shared with us as he unpacked the reality that we have a new kind of death as a result of our relationship with Jesus.

Eric began by explaining that we are trained in our culture to do things on our own. We are driven to be independent and self-sufficient. However, following Jesus requires us to experience and new kind of death; a death to two different types of lifestyles that Paul begins to expose in Colossians 2:16-19:

Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day-- things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.

Eric explained that in these verses we see that if we are going to live a new kind of death to self, we must recognize that Jesus is more powerful than man-made religion. In these verses, Paul was revealing the reality that the Old Testament rules and regulations were a shadow that reveals Jesus. Just as a shadow is flows from and points to the source that casts the shadow, the Old Testament flows from and points to Jesus Christ. Eric then pointed to a second lifestyle that we must die to in Colossians 2:20-23:

If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, "Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!" (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)-- in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.

Eric explained that in these verses we see that if we are going to live a new kind of death to self, we must recognize that Jesus is more powerful than lone human effort. In these verses, we discover that Spirituality is not based on what you give up or on human effort, but on what Christ has done and is doing in our lives.

While religion is based on "I obey and I am accepted", Eric reminded us that a relationship with Jesus is based on "I am accepted so I obey". Our manner of life and obedience to Jesus should be driven by a response of gratitude.

Eric concluded by driving home the reality that Jesus not only supplies our needs; Jesus is enough. Jesus plus nothing is everything.

So, are you living a lifestyle that is based on man-made religion or on lone human effort? Or are you living a new kind of death; a death to self that recognizes that Jesus is more powerful than religion and our own efforts...