Year 5, Day 89: 2 Corinthians 6

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Discipleship Focus: Challenge, Invitation

• Invitation: God is always inviting us into relationship with Him. He desires that we know Him and that we know His desire for us.
• Challenge: God does not merely wish us to be in relationship with Him as we are.  He challenges us to grow, stretch, and transform as we take on the mantle of being His representatives to this world.

In this chapter Paul continues to lift up the banners of invitation and challenge.  He gives us a pretty good list of what we can expect when we embrace Christ more than we embrace the world.  He should know.  Paul knew the extremes of the joy in Christ and the rejection of the world.

Yet, look at that list.  Paul is inviting us into some very good things.  Paul reminds us that to know Christ is to know the Holy Spirit.  It is to be filled with the wisdom of God.  It is to be affected by God’s purity while our own filth is discarded.  It is to know patience, to speak in love and to have honor, and to wield the power of God!  We are being invited into a very unique place for a human being to go.  We are invited into an existence that we cannot come into on our own.

But there is challenge, too.  Look at the majority of the list.  To know Christ is to know beatings.  It is to know hardships.  It is to know rejection.  It is to face death at the hands of the world.

But the challenge is more than that.  Look specifically at the end of the list.  To know Christ is to endure all these negative things and have it not affect your outlook.  It is to be treated as imposters but to live as true people.  It is to be treated as unknown, and yet live as thought we are well known.  It is to be treated as though we are dying, yet live!  It is to be treated as punished, and yet live in spite of the abuse.  It is to be treated with sorrowful, yet live in a state of rejoicing.  It is to be treated as having nothing to offer, yet live to making many rich in Christ.  It is to be treated as having nothing, yet live knowing that we are in relationship with the person who owns everything.

To follow Christ is the challenge of living dichotomy.  From a worldly perspective we will give up much.  But we are to live with a smile on our face and joy in our hearts because we have it all.  The challenge is to keep our eye on the prize: eternal dwelling with God the Father!

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