Month: September 2003

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” –Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)

Isn’t it sad that this statement is just as true today as it was then? We are doing a study on what it means to be a Christian in my Sunday School class, and while I might complain a bit now and then that I feel like I’m being fed information below the level that I’m at, there are still some pearls of wisdom to be gained even if something is taken to a simplified level.

We forget that just because we’re Christians it doesn’t mean that life gets any easier. In fact, it probably gets harder because Satan is now focused on messing up out testimony and trying his hardest to make us feel so completely inadequate that we become paralyzed when it comes to doing God’s work.

We live in a society of convenience and want our relationship with Christ to be as easy to form as it is to microwave a meal. We’ve got to remember that it takes time to learn what God wants us to do. It requires time, patience and willingness to read and listen to what he’s saying. We can’t instantly understand what we’re told, in fact, sometimes we never “get it” and simply have to go on our faith that God is seeing the “big picture” for us. But it doesn’t stop there; John G. Miller said that “learning is not attending, listening or reading. Nor is it merely gaining knowledge. Learning is really about translating knowing what to do into doing what we know. It’s about changing.” How can we accomplish that change if we insist on having a fast-food relationship?

Salvation is not a denominational doctrine or a family inheritance. It is a personal experience. –Diana Hagee

I found out the other day that another of my friends/study partners/people I come in contact with rather frequently is homosexual. She asked me if I hated her because I had recently told her of my faith and that I was Southern Baptist. I told her that I didn’t hate her.

I couldn’t help being reminded later that we are called to “hate the sin and love the sinner.” I couldn’t think of a truer command. What is the point of having a belief based on love, when you can’t see the person behind the sin? And yet, I still hesitate in loving sometimes. It’s very hard to be slapped in the face by reality sometimes and find out that what you think isn’t necessarily what is real. My nature says, “hate and distrust” things and people who are not like me, but the Jesus in me says, love anyway like your father loves you. I never realized how difficult that could be until high school and now another layer has been added to what happened then. I know what I’m supposed to do, it’s just complicated sometimes.

Lord, help me to be your missionary of love by breaking my heart and showing me how to pour my love into the lives of others

Will you be a people pleaser or a Father pleaser?” (Hagee, 27)

What is it about us that craves the attention of others instead of the attention of a loving God? He can be so much more attentive than we can ever dream of and yet we still try to find solace with others. We become content with “our lot” and don’t even realize that it’s not “our lot” at all. He wants us to be and do so much more than we are capable of and I think that scares most of us to petrification. We don’t die to what he wants to do in us, but we can become so rigid in our “normal” routines of going to church, volunteering with children and youth events, singing in the choir, etc. that we deny the fact that he wants more of us. We lie to ourselves saying, “I’m doing enough or I’m doing too much and no one else is helping.” It’s not about how much we feel is enough but about how much God wants us to do. Now don’t take that to mean that you should be doing everything at once either. We are not a one man band; we are a body and each part needs to work together in order to glorify God.