The Big American excuse...

I met my wife while I was serving Jesus with my life at 18. I was plugged into a church, serving under a great youth pastor. From 15 on, I had cut my teeth on ministry on the streets of Portland OR, preaching and teaching in my high-school, leading bible-studies and prayer meetings at home and before school, in the square with gutter punks, in the missions with the homeless, in the back alleys getting spit on and threatened. I remember sitting on the street at night in a line of drunks across from a dance club. There was a long line of teens outside amp'n up for a night of hump'n and pump'n and then one of those teens saw me. We knew each-other and he came up to me and asked what on earth I was doing. It was in moments like those that I knew my generation was on two different paths. I sought to abandoned the pleasure houses of christianity to serve Him in mission to the least, the poor, the fatherless and the broken. While kids were spinning their heads on bats and sitting on each-others laps at youth events...I was weeping over street kids that had no home. I was not perfect and had plenty of sin to fight through but the paths were clear to me.

I've heard all the baby bitch'n that goes on among purposeless young people that want God to mommy them into the kingdom but dont want to go where He said to go and do what He said to do. I have followed that call into the red lights of Amsterdam, under the bridges of our cities, into the prison cells of child molesters. I've loved the elderly, held their hands and shared the love of God with the dying. I've seen the addicts arms, the puke and urine of the lost. I've wretched by being too close. I've taken the abused and broken and fatherless into my home at great cost. I've wept with the girl whose arms are testimony to the hell she has experienced at the hands of men, drugs and life. I've sold what I love to gain what I can not lose. I've hammered out my call in the present, not waiting for permission for mission. I've led while others waited. I've fallen, forsaken and repented. All of this ranting feels vain but it's only to throw some reality water in the face of a generation that has used its divorced, drugged out, abused, broken, sinful past as an excuse for living in neutral. I don't buy it...God has used me, He will use you...if you are available. And who doesn't have more spare time than this generation?
We could evangelize our cities just on the tv time we consume.

"I dont know what to do with my life" is the big american excuse.

It's a phrase that is an affront to the poor and suffering of the world.
It's a statement born of prosperity and privilege from the mouths of a spoiled generation.
Most of the worlds young people if given the chances we have had or do have, would ascend in purpose.
I truly believe our generation will stand and condemn us in the judgment.
They will ask us what we did with our lives, our wealth, our time, our gifts, our opportunity.
What did we do with all that the Lord blessed us with in this prosperous church of America?

We are more concerned about getting laid than getting saved.
More passionate about Victoria's Secret than Christ's commission.
We will sell off half we own to purchase the latest game system but can't scrape together much of an offering for the nations of this world that dont know Christ. We got to have a sweet ride but care not for our neighbor whose been raped by her bastard father for the last 5 years. It's a sin to see how much waste we expend on a generation that should be selling everything and being spent on the cause of Christ.

Why have we sacrificed our generation and ourselves on the altar of Mammon?
Why do you, young minds and hearts, lay down your lives for the upward call of the American dream but won't move into the ghetto?

When did we exchange the cross for comfort and security?