I wanna be a rock star

 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:31,32
Many teaching we get in these two verses. I will look in this: "If you hold to my teaching..."
To believe in Jesus is more than to  know about Him. It is more than to know what He is able to do. To trust in Him means  to abandon our beliefs, even when we "believe" they may be came from God.
Many times we were taught about God but few of us look at Bible carefully to know if we were taught right, we use to believe because we use to believe!
When Jesus calls us, He says come and trust in me like I'm, even (and I dare to say, frequently) this believe means to abandon our on view point about Him. How many time we use to question our on faith? We have our faith and we always think be right.
John 7:27 shows us people confused about if Jesus was or not The Messiah, and why? Because a common sense in the time, used to say that when The Messiah come, nobody would know where He would come from and Jesus, even showing great miracles, amazing teachings and uncountable signs, was knowing by everybody, His birth city, parents and family making Him not fulfill 'the common sense'.
what it means, Patricia, you can ask me?
It means, dearest reader,  if we day by day, do not seek God, and obey His word more than religion and common sense, we are going to lost the real Jesus, and what is more important, salvation! Some times, we see Jesus in people that we don't think be "someone of God" and this kind of thought block us to listen God. We use to listen and read "that preachers we like" and few time we dare to question them, we just listen! Jesus said: If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:31,32. 
To hold His teaching many (many) times, will means be against common sense, religious traditions and culture.
We are near of a big american commemoration, Halloween. Some churches have bringing it into its temples cultivating witches, monsters and many kinds of bad stuff, just because 'it is our culture'. Brazil has many similar things, what people call folklore and I call blindness.
But, what matter is, that we have to be free and this freedom only come from obey Jesus and His word. To keep our salvation we have to stay living Matthew 5. Loving those who persecute us. Forgiving those who hurt us. Helping the needy.

I have  seen the church of 21 century. This is the most rich church of all time, and to our shame and sadness, the 21 century church is that has less impact and influence in the society. How is it possible? Maybe it is possible because people and leaders of this church, look for become similar to the world. Our clothes, life style, language, and habits in almost nothing differs of the world. We have the same desires, we have the same plans, we look for our own will, we look for be known by our greatness, our diploma in big universities. The 'dream' of big part of people that are called christian, is the same dream of those who aren't.
It is rare listen young from our churches say that to dream in become missionary, pastor our be known for forgive, love and live like Jesus. They want to be celebrity! If be pastor, they want be at TV, our to be a "gospel rock' star".  Resigns, altruism aren't words of our vocabulary!
Church, we have to wake up. We have to come back to Jesus life style. More of Him and less (too much less) of us.
To be a real christian, we need fast, turn away. We have to review our concepts before it guides us to too far that will be impossible to come back.
Come back church, come back!

Pati Nanni