revolutionary honesty!

"Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.”
[Henry David Thoreau]

As a Revolutionary, how do you do friendship at the moment? How upfront are you with your mates about the difficulties of being a Christian? Let’s be honest, if the road ahead was always easy for us as Christians, then a) loads of our mates would be Christians already and b) we wouldn’t really have a revolution to be part of, because everything in life would be a piece of cake! There'd be nothing to revolt against, because all our friends and family would be Christians and the world a nice, safe, saved place to live in!
Being a Revolutionary and changing our friends' lives means a lot of honesty about how we speak of the Christian faith. Let’s see how Jesus modelled friendship to the 12 men he called to walk with Him for three amazing years during His public ministry on earth:
Wherever he went, Jesus turned peoples’ lives upside down. He was - after all - the greatest Revolutionary to have ever walked this planet. People were either left deeply challenged, amazingly healed or had their noses put out of joint by Jesus challenging their religiosity, materialism or treatment of the poor.
Yet among all of the characters that Jesus hung out with, surely - if we take a closer look in the Gospels - the most affected were actually his closest friends. With patience, love and sometimes a firm tone, Jesus had to prepare them for life after his death. In John 15: 18--27 as Jesus sat with his friends for one last meal, he gave them some harsh truth. The world hated Jesus and the world would hate them too, because of how they would go on to share the Good News to others, and shake the foundations of the world with the life-changing power of his Spirit.
The world doesn’t like Revolutionaries. The world doesn’t like being challenged and being made uncomfortable about what it stands for, how it treats people and the many things it believes in. Some of your mates won’t either - but should that stop you telling them about Jesus? No way! Your job as Hope Revolutionaries is not to force people to become Christians, but is to tell them about him, by how you live and the comforting and sometimes challenging words you might have to say to them.