Dangerous Calling

Luke 14:15-24

As we send out our seniors into the world or into the workplace, churches all over America are talking about something: the dropout rate.

As of 2007 and 2011, there were two surveys done by Barna called the Faith that Lasts Project, which identified the statistics of people dropping out of church and when. What they found at the time was that students in the 18-22 region were the most likely to leave church.

And so, that has caused an immense amount of fear regarding institutions such as universities, of letting students leave “the nest,” and even having students in a non-Christian workplace.

This study, however, is out of date, and has led to what I would say was an overreaction.

First, it’s now out of date. The last study was in 2011, which was 14 years, one massive epidemic, and multiple giant technological updates ago.

Now, according to a Lifeway Research study with partnership with the Institute for Family Studies has shown that the average age that students walk away from the faith is 16.

Essentially, what the study states is that a student who is raised in a Christian home is statistically more likely to walk away from the faith starting at age 13, climaxing at about 17-18, and then settling down more at 22.

“most nonreligious children are born into religious households and lose their faith while under the supervision of parents who believe that they are successfully transmitting their religious values.” Lyman Stone - National Longitudinal Survey of Youth

What we’re seeing is more likely than college causing a dropout is actually us, it’s us as parents not living a life that shines Jesus through our entire being.

Students, as you go out into the world, you need to know that following Jesus isn’t just a helpful alternative or a way to get out of hell, it is the only way to true life, both after we die, but also right now!

Not only is the study now out of date, but it caused us to scare our children away from trying really hard things.

I have talked to numerous parents in families in multiple different areas that have said that they want to discourage their children from going to a university or getting into a “challenging” career field because they are worried about what will happen to their faith.

A deep and abiding care for students and their souls is necessary and good and right, but what this has led to is that young Christians are taught to fear knowledge, and there are less Christians in fields that need followers of Jesus in them.

It is my belief that, based on the Scriptures and what I have seen as a pastor to young people (and a former young person), that authentic apprenticeship to Jesus Christ is the solution to students leaving the faith.

New experiences don’t kill faith, weak faith kills faith.

There is no point in the Bible that says “watch out for those 16 year olds, they’re not going to want to be Jesus people anymore!”

Even the concept of the teenager only came about in the 40’s and 50’s, prior to that they were just people!

Also, I wouldn’t believe in my Lord if the entire faith system that I have placed the foundation of my life on could be dismantled by one disgruntled English Lit professor who’s got a chip on their shoulder and can quote a depressed philosopher like Nietzsche!

God is MUCH bigger than that, and the tweed jackets do not make you smarter than God!

Jesus was, without a doubt, the smartest person in every room He walked into! We’re He living on earth as He did back then, He would STILL be the smartest person in every room that He walked in.

He’s God! He knows how the universe works! He’s not afraid of talking about the Big Bang! He knows what Nietzsche last thought was as he died insane and alone!

Besides that, Christianity is not a “safe” option. A safe option would be to make comfort and control the point of our lives and live that way for as long as we can, at which point we’ll die sad and alone and spend eternity away from God!

Following Jesus promises something much greater, and much harder.

Being a follower of Jesus will look like us giving up our hopes of control and of comfort, it will look like starting to care about what God sees in us, not what we see. Being a follower of Jesus looks like opening up to immense change and difficulty for the sake of being right with God. It is a dangerous calling, but it is exactly what we were built for!

So, it’s not new things that kill faith, and it’s not a magical turning of age.

What it truly seems like is happening oftentimes when students and adults walk away from the church is threefold: we’re hurt, we’re busy, or we haven’t seen it. There are other factors, but this seems to be the most common.

Church can be a place of immense hurt. People hurt people, and church people are some of the best at hurting people. And so, for some of us, we walk away because it hurts to be in a church.

Maybe we’re just too busy. There’s all of these other things that pull us in different directions, and we can be left wondering when we left God by the wayside. Maybe it’s been so long since we’ve thought of Him because we haven’t given ourselves time to think of Him.

Or, maybe we’ve just never seen what a true apprenticeship to Jesus is like. We’ve seen a lot of people claim to follow God and then live very differently, and so we come to the realization that God was never that important to begin with because He wasn’t that important for those other Christians.

And yet, the story of Jesus shows a very different picture! A real, authentic relationship with Jesus is so much more than what we’ve been shown, it’s so much better than a full calendar, and it is such a place of peace for those of us who have been hurt.

Nothing less than life in the steps of Christ is adequate to the human soul or the needs of our world. Any other offer fails to do justice to the drama of human redemption, deprives the bearer of life’s greatest opportunity, and abandons this present life to the evil powers of the age. The correct perspective is to see following Christ not only as the necessity it is, but as the fulfillment of the highest human possibilities and as life on the highest plane. - Dallas Willard

And so, we come to this point. We know that it’s not a magical age or location that kills faith, it’s our own faith that kills faith. But what does that look like? What are the hidden priorities that can damage our faith, and what are we missing?

Field, Oxen, and Marriage

Luke 14:18–20 ESV

But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’

This passage starts with a master of a great house.

This is clearly a depiction of God and His Kingdom.

So, this man invites a bunch of people to a banquet, and instantly excuses start rolling in.

First, a man says that he can’t because he has a field that he just bought and needs to look at.

Next, someone said that he just got some oxen to work on his farm and needs to work on it.

Finally, someone says, I just got married, I can’t come.

All three of these people are living in the biggest concerns of our age, and are some of the reason why we run away from the faith.

The three reasons are

Success, Career, and Relationships.

Success : Field

Career: Oxen

And Relationships: Marriage

It’s sex, power, and money; it’s the American Dream. It’s the white picket fence with a good house and a good job and a nice family that we have been told is the most important thing that you and I could ever chase after and it is always a lie that will lead us on a path of complacency in our walk with Jesus that will end miserably for us.

And those three things are important to students and to adults. These three have the ability to consistently pull us away from our walk with God.

We are too busy trying to succeed in order to spend time with Jesus.

Maybe we are busy with homework, or we have things going on around the house, and so we put God off.

We spend so much of our energy trying to force success, because we don’t trust God to lead us in a path that is good and right.

Our jobs can become too important in our lives.

We have things to do, we have worlds to conquer! And so, we lose sight of the Lord.

It becomes harder to give of our time and our money to the Kingdom of God because our job has become so important that what it gives is too precious.

Or, we become identify who we are by what we do.

We are not a child of God first, we are a carpenter or a teacher or a pastor.

All of those careers are great, but they are merely positions that last temporarily, our place in God is eternal.

Our relationships can even be a strain on our walk with God.

We can put so much emphasis on chasing relationships that God becomes a backburner.

Maybe we want a romantic partner so badly that we’re willing to force a bad relationship instead of holding out for a good one.

We want friends (which is just as hard or harder for adults) and so then we minimize the role of God in our lives so that we look better.

Maybe even our family can be a source of issue?

Maybe we have put our children or our spouses above the Lord

That will hurt us and them, we will put too much pressure on them and they will always fail us.

Maybe we put so much pressure on our families to fulfill our desires, to where they become more of our God than God does.

What the Bible communicates in this passage and in others is that these things are not God, and God is not supposed to be the number two or three or four in our lives. If He is not the main point of our lives, He is not really in our lives.

When we put something other than God at the center of our life, we are not looking like apprentices of Jesus, whether you’re a student going off to college or whether you’re 85 and retired.

So, what does a disciple look like?

The Desperate

Luke 14:21–24 ESV

So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’ ”

Look who is invited to the banquet!

The poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.

It’s the one’s who need a hot meal. The Master invites in the desperate, those who don’t have the ability to rely on themselves.

The Lord always loved desperate souls. - Watchman Nee

When we come to the Lord confident in our own righteousness, we are not following Jesus, we’re bargaining with Him.

“I’ll serve You, but I want something in return.”

“I’m good enough as a person, I’ll be fine.”

When we do the “Christian thing” [going to church sometimes, giving occasionally, praying at mealtimes] but are not enraptured by the grace of God, we are just living in a social religion, which has zero impact on our lives or our eternity.

We must be desperate! We must be filled with awe and wonder and a holy and reverent fear of God because we are before the Lord of all!

James 2:19 ESV

You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!

So what we “believe” that Jesus is real, so do demons! That’s not faith, we must trust in Him. We must desperately cling to our Lord because there is absolutely nothing and no one else that can satisfy.

We have no other safe haven, we have no other option. If you want to live a full and meaningful life now and for all eternity, you must turn wholeheartedly to your Father in Heaven.. No thing and no one can promise you anything of value except Him.

Remember, the Lord always loved desperate souls; if we have some excuse as to why we can’t follow Jesus today, that’s not desperation, that’s complacency.

So, now we are left with a final question.

What Now?

We know that weak faith kills faith.

We know that there are three big pulls from faith from this passage: success, career, and relationships

We know that the Lord always loved desperate souls.

What can we do now, for our children as they grow and for ourselves?

Our children

Maybe, you are a follower of Jesus who is a parent or wanting to be a parent. There is SO MUCH pressure on being a good parent that we can lose sight of the most important job of being a parent, which is pointing them to God.

Know this! If the study that I mentioned at the beginning of this by Lifeway is true, your students start to lose their faith much earlier than you think.

Parenting is not a “I’ll figure it out when things calm down” sort of a thing. We can’t start taking Jesus seriously when they go into high school and expect much.

The article, “The Next Generation Is Leaving the Faith Earlier Than You Realize” by Lifeway had three tips for parents.

Make sure dad shows up.

The odds of a teenager dropping out of church are 1.27 times lower among those whose fathers attended church compared to those whose fathers did not attend when the teenager was 17.

This obviously applies to moms too, it’s just that historically, men have been less

Enjoy church as a family.

For those who did not indicate that their parents genuinely liked church, the odds of dropping out are 1.49 times higher than those who report their parents really liked their congregation.

Encourage Bible reading.

The odds of dropping out are 1.23 times higher among those who did not spend regular time reading the Bible privately prior to the age of 18 compared to those who regularly spent personal time in Scripture.

You are the greatest evangelist to your children. It is not their youth pastor, it is not their Sunday school teacher. You spend the most time with them. What you prioritize and what you show in your life is what your students will retain.

For ourselves

Now, for all the rest of us! Being a follower of Jesus is not just a “good thing” for students to do, Jesus is the Way and the Truth and the Life. We need Him!

We must repent from the way that we have been living and turn ourselves entirely to the Lord.

We have all fallen into the trap of success, career, or relationships. We have all made an idol out of something or someone that is most certainly not God.

Let’s develop into people who are desperate for Christ in our lives.

Something that I’ve done in the last week or so is meditated on 1 Timothy 6:13-16. We started doing it in youth group and that section has just been burned into my brain.

1 Timothy 6:13–16 ESV

I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

Take some time in the Scriptures, find a passage that the Lord is speaking to you, and chew on it.

Spend some time in honest prayer and worship with the triune God. It’s worth it.

Remember, weak faith kills faith, so we must anchor our entire being into God, because He is strong enough to withstand whatever it is that we’re going through.