Christian Outfitters: "The Camp Of Familiarity"

Christian Outfitters - Discipleship Resources, Workshops, Inspirational Graphics, Leather Journals.:
"Most believers live lives of quiet desperation instead of seeking to live life deliberately. We despise change. We work all day, go home, watch television, collapse in bed and start all over again the next day. Our lives become a chain of bondage. This is certainly not sinful, but this kind of life-style is not the life of Christ and can keep us from God.

Moses would have us leave the familiar and pitch our tents 'outside the camp of familiarity.' Jesus would have us do the same:

'And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.' (Heb. 13:12-14)

Most of the book of Hebrews tells us how Christ is greater than the sacrificial system. There may be a time coming when you find it necessary to leave your 'camp' and suffer with Christ. Jesus suffered humiliation and uncleanness outside the Jerusalem gates on our behalf. The time is coming when Christians will be called on to declare their loyalty to Christ above any other loyalty, to choose to follow Jesus whatever suffering that might bring. We will be called to move outside the safe confinement of our past, our traditions, and our ceremonies to live for Christ.

Christ calls us to leave the familiar, the distracting world of our lower senses and abide in Him. The highest goal of our prayer is to find God. Today, seek Him until you find Him. Continue day by day, week by week, until you have drawn near enough to God that you can hear His voice. Become so confident that He is near to you that you hear know He hears you even when you whisper.

"Come near to God and he will come near to you." (James 4:8)

If we are going to become holy as He is holy, we must recognize that Jesus has already broken our chains and restraints of just getting by and living an average life. We must choose to go outside the camp of familiarity and abide in the tent of God's presence."