 I'm frustrated. I love to see young people passionate about following Jesus. I really do. In fact, that's one of the main goals of daily disciple ministry. But my heart breaks. And let me tell you why. I've become increasingly worried when I look at mainstream Christian culture of young people that are, say, they're on fire for Jesus. And I'm going to say something that may offend you or make you mad, but I want you to hear me out. Just as past generations have had their own difficulties and things and trends that have kind of swayed Christianity in one direction or another, I believe this same generation that we're in today is being pulled in certain directions. And because of that, there's certain distortions to the Christian message that are taking place that I think are very harmful to young people and all people that claim the name of Christianity and of Christ. Because of this, there are some distortions to the Christian message that are readily believed and taught. I'll explain some of these distortions in a second. Now, believe me, I desperately want young people and all people to be excited and passionate about the message of Jesus. I want them to let that message transform the lives that they live. But I want them to be excited about the true gospel, about Jesus' true message, about the true Jesus. With all that being said, I want to get into some of the distortions that I see taking place that might create a certain amount of excitement and passion, but it's temporary. This message that is being permeated within our Christian culture is not one that will lend people to a lifelong time of faithfulness towards God. With all that being said, I want to point out some specific distortions that I've seen and heard that I believe create momentary excitement and passion, but not lifelong faithfulness to Jesus. Now, how I'm going to highlight these distortions is calling it the message of trendy Jesus because I believe that is what it is. It's not the message of true Jesus. It's a message of a distorted perspective of Jesus' teachings in order to conform them to the culture. Now, one of these first distortions is that Jesus came to only preach about loving your neighbor. Jesus' message was all about love, not offending anyone, loving all people, accepting all people. Now, first, I don't want you to get the wrong idea. Did Jesus teach about loving one another as you love yourself as loving God first and loving others second? Of course he did. We can read that clearly in the Bible. And was it a key message that Jesus wanted to get across that we ought to love one another? Of course it was. But what I see, the message of trendy Jesus is taking and excluding the other aspects of what Jesus' message was and focusing in on very specific points of what he taught. Loving one another, a lot of people can get on board with that. And if we simply say, oh, Jesus was just about loving one another, that's very easy. And a lot of people, that's not very confrontational. You don't need to make a decision about that. You can be like, oh, that's great. I love the fact that Jesus was about that. Good for you, Christian. And unbelievers can walk on their way. But the distortion comes in when other parts of Jesus' message are excluded and only some parts are highlighted. Now, I've noticed when this message is taught, there can be a tendency of people when they hear this to work towards striving towards pleasing God through loving because this message of loving one another is not a message of grace that so many perceive it to be. But it's actually a message of law. Now, you think of churches that sway towards more trendy styles, adopting fads, conforming their message to the world. You think, oh, well, they must be hyper grace. That's all about grace and it's okay and all this kind of thing. But often it's actually the opposite. Obviously there are those kind of teachings that go along with that style. But a lot of it when they talk about, oh, Jesus' message was to love one another. People see that and they say, oh, I have to love one another. And when they fail, there's great guilt associated with that. It's all about works. If Jesus' message was to love one another, then his main message was a commandment of doing something. You have to do this. Keep doing it. Do it better. And we see that we can't love as Jesus loved. We always fall short. Now, Jesus' message wasn't singularly about loving one another and it wasn't singularly about needing to keep his law. And it wasn't singularly about grace and the fact that you are just completely grace and you can do whatever you want. The law is irrelevant, all this kind of thing. The way Jesus came and he spoke was a masterful way of connecting law and grace. In many of his sermons before his death, he exhorted people to delight in God's law. And these laws would include, yeah, love your neighbor as yourself. Love God but love your neighbor. And these are commandments of law that we ought to pay attention to. But part of these distortions come in is when we forget that Jesus also taught that he was the fulfillment of the law, the fact that we could not keep the law perfectly but that's why Jesus came and to fulfill the good news that Christ came to die for our sins, the fact that we could not love each other and God perfectly. Jesus took that punishment that we deserve for that sin on himself and he died on the cross. And he rose again on the third day and if we repent and trust in Christ we'd be forgiven and given new life, given eternal life and transformed inside out. But these distortions take that wonderful message of the gospel away and box it off and push it to the side and focus on Jesus was just about loving one another and a lot of people have that in their mind and that is bondage because if it's just about law, we'll never perfectly keep the law. You know by saying that Jesus message was primarily about loving your neighbor you are actually in fact taking Jesus out of his own message and as a result you are left with a call to do better, to be better, to love more. Are those bad things? No, but on their own that is bondage and bondage that we cannot break free of because we can never love sufficiently. But Jesus true message was to address our utter failure and give us an everlasting joy in the fact that he saved us. You see the real message of Jesus, the true message of Jesus wasn't to love more, to do better, to try harder. It was look at me, look at Jesus because he has lived better. He has loved more. He has lived a perfect life and you can look at that. Yes, you can look at that as an example but understand this, you will never live up to that example and because of that Christ has already taken your punishment on himself by dying on the cross and that is Jesus message. Not that you can do better, live better, become a better person and better yourself in your life and that's the meaning of life. It is that you cannot do that only through Christ can you become a new creation striving towards looking like Christ. And that's why I'm grieved because I see a whole bunch of young people that are excited about a portion of the message of the Gospel about being a better person, about loving people as Christ loved people and I see that as something amazing. I see that as very exciting that people want to love each other better and as Christ loved us. But the problem is when that's the only portion of Jesus message that they hear, they are left with law and ultimately they are left with disappointment of their failure because we cannot love perfectly, we cannot love as Jesus loved. So my frustration and my grief is not that these people are being distorting the message necessarily even though that is an aspect of it but it's more about the results of this distortion that people are left in disappointment and disillusionment towards God because they're missing out on a key aspect of the Gospel the fact that we were not asked to be better people as that wasn't the good news that God's called be a better person it was that Christ was a better person for us and that is where we can find hope. See Jesus true message ought to get you excited and passionate about following him and loving other people. That's not only trendy Jesus's message but that's the real true Jesus message is to love one another. So don't take that and don't hear what I'm saying and all of a sudden say oh I guess I don't need to love anybody because that's law. No we do that out of love for God and for other people not as duty because I heard my pastor say this the other day that love cannot come out of duty. It can never come out of duty. It has to come out of the Holy Spirit. That love that God imparts to us we can impart it to other people and that's something powerful that we ought to be aware of but if you're not shaken towards passion and excitement I would reexamine what you're actually believing about Jesus message and make sure you're not buying into the message of trendy Jesus. Thanks so much guys. I hope you appreciated and enjoyed this video. If you are interested in staying in touch with these videos and seeing more content I would go to dailydisciple.ca my website where you can see all these videos and more content like blog posts and other things. Also subscribe to the channel and give this video like if you enjoyed it and leave a comment down below and let me your opinion about this. I know this is a kind of a bit more controversial topic but I don't believe it should be. We should all be on the same page about Jesus's true message. Thanks so much guys and I appreciate you guys watching. See you next time. Bye.