I’m not satisfied.

I have had the privilege of starting and leading a ministry that is now conducting outreach in over one dozen inner city communities. I have seen lives changed, strongholds broken, addictions ended, wounded hearts healed, and the fatherless embraced by the unconditional love of our Heavenly Father.

But I’m not satisfied.

I have walked the streets of the South Bronx, Harlem, East New York, the South Side of Chicago, Liberty City and Overtown in Miami, East Detroit and SW Detroit, and other notorious urban communities. By God’s grace alone, I have built relationships with drug lords and gang leaders, housing project tenants associations, community leaders, businessmen and school boards.

But I am not satisfied.

I have been to 23 nations. I have walked through the slums of Guatemala City and some of the worst favelas of Sao Paolo, bringing the hope of the Gospel. I have done street drama in Cuba. I have fellowshipped with and equipped underground church leaders in closed nations and been blessed by their devotion in the midst of persecution.

But I am not satisfied.

I have seen miracles: A blind man healed in Santiago, Chile. A young man in Chicago healed of cancer. A man in a remote village of Vietnam, near death with gangrene in his legs from stepping on a mine, healed and restored, resulting in his tribe turning to Christ.

But I am not satisfied.

I am not satisfied because what I have experienced in Jesus has only made me want more. It is as if all that I have seen and experienced in Him has only been a preamble to what is yet to come.

And I want it.

I am not content to stay where I am. I am not content to know what I know of Him and know no more. I am not content to sit back and say, “I have seen God’s hand on four continents. I have seen enough.”

No, I have not seen enough. I do not want a cultural expression of Jesus. I do not want a religious expression of Jesus. I do not want a denominational expression of Jesus.

I just want Jesus.

I want Jesus to turn what’s left of my world upside down. I want the rest of my flesh to be consumed by His presence. I want what’s left of my thoughts to become His thoughts, and my ways His ways.

The popular megachurch Jesus, the prophetic movement Jesus, the prosperity Jesus … all of these and those like them do not attract me. They do not attract me because the focus is on a human personality or a movement, not singly and wholeheartedly on Jesus.

I am tired of substitutes. And if I, who by God’s grace have encountered Jesus at many levels am tired of substitutes, how about the masses hungry for authenticity? Thirsty for real faith that satisfies?

Let me be gut honest. Much of what we have offered in the church has been polluted with flesh, compromise, human hero worship, pride, fleshly lust for attention, self-centered pursuit for personal gain, avoidance of sacrifice and resistance to submission. This diluted gospel has transformed no one. As a result, we have nearly lost our culture.

But there is a remnant like me. If you are still reading this, you are most likely part of it, too. You are not satisfied. You want Jesus and the pure, unadulterated, raw, flesh-crucifying Gospel. And you are willing to die for it.

Here is the wonderful, amazing, unfathomable, unimaginable news: Followers like you and I are the ones He is looking for.