Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Leaders and elders of our nation ... Jesus ... 'The stone that you builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.' There is salvation in no one else! There is no other name in all of heaven for people to call on to save them."

The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men who had had no special training. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus. (Acts 4:8-13)

Over the next several weeks, tens of millions of people around the world will go see the movie, The Passion of The Christ. This movie will offer believers a rare opportunity to share the grace of God based on the powerful demonstration of God's love demonstrated in Jesus' sacrificial death for us on the Cross — often called "The Passion." Efforts have been made and outreach strategies have been planned to take advantage of this opportunity. At Heartlight, several of us have been working on a very simple website that will help folks who touched by the movie to become Jesus' followers, just like the very first followers after his Passion — this website is FirstFollowers.com. You may or may not be a part of a group making plans to share this powerful, but horribly difficult, demonstration of God's grace with others. If not, please prayerfully consider what you believe God is calling you to do at this rare moment in our times and find some way to be ready to communicate your hope in Jesus to others. (1 Peter 3:15-16)

My bigger concern, however, is that we will fail to demonstrate Jesus' message in our lives as his Body — his physical presence in the world as the Church. One of the things that captured people's attention about the earliest followers of Jesus was their lifestyle — cowards were now courageous and sinners were now righteous, people could tell that knowing Jesus had truly changed them.

So much of what passes for modern Christianity is a lifestyle that is almost indistinguishable from the culture that surrounds it. Rather than being salt and light bringing light into darkness and righteousness into what is rotting with decay, we have been co-opted by the darkness and decay around us. We want Jesus to be our Savior, but we back away from him being our Lord. We make Jesus our buddy on Sunday, but our forgotten friend as we pursue lives out of step with his character the rest of the week.

Once we grasp what Jesus did in dying for our sins, we must be brought to a moment of watershed importance: are we going to follow him and let him be our Lord? Anything less is to rob "The Passion" of its transforming power. Early Christian leaders were known because people saw that being a follower of Jesus brought huge lifestyle changes. Can that same power be seen in us?

We must be brought to a moment of watershed importance.
The Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk — or movie theater emotion — it is a matter of God's power transforming our lives to become like his Son who gave up everything to bring us life. Can be claim to passionate for this Savior without letting his lordship be seen in our lives? Let's combine The Passion of The Christ with a passion to live for Christ before a watching world in need of a real, life-transforming Savior.

For the Kingdom of God is not just fancy talk; it is living by God's power. ... And as the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like him and reflect his glory even more. (1 Corinthians 4:20; 2 Corinthians 3:18)