How should we recognise Christians?

I’ve been doing a bit of thinking recently, this clearly doesn’t mean I’m tackling the heavy weight issues of the day or anything, but just simple, straight forward things. I’ve read differing views on evangelism recently, it’s clearly set up like a spectrum, but maybe it shouldn’t just be. At one end you have the I’ll shout as loud as I can about why you’re going to burn horribly in hell whilst wearing a sandwich board, holding a banner and secretly being pleased with themselves for it. At the other end of the spectrum are the social action people, or maybe they’re not quite at the other end, maybe it’s more the people who try to do a good deed each day and by being nice someone one day might ask them about why they’re nice. Thing is, is that what Jesus said about evangelism? Don’t get me wrong, I that it’s a great thing evangelism is so varied, but I think we might be missing the first port of call.

Now, you might be wondering what I’m going on about, provided that is that you are still reading this. Well I’ll try to explain. When you think of the church what comes to mind? I suppose it’ll depend what sort of church you go to, or if you go to church at all. Often things like worship, organ, vicar, teacher, or anything else, at some point in the list there’s often going to be some kind of controversy or disagreements, and basically Christians getting annoyed and falling out with each other about nothing more than, in some cases, the colour of the new curtains, or the type of chairs we should have, or how we should conduct our services, whether this or that is good or bad, or why this or that is incredibly heretical. Lets be honest, there are very few churches where there’s no disagreements over stuff and people threatening to leave over something or other.

It’s all balls isn’t it? What a waste of time. Why would anyone want to go to a church when the people in it are often squabbling over nothing. I can’t see that as appealing in any way shape or form. This is where I think Jesus has something to say, obviously Paul does too, but I like to go to Jesus first. Here it is, from John:

“By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Maybe that’s where we, as Christians, should start. Imagine if non-Christians looked at the church and saw people who actually loved each other unconditionally, humbly, genuinely and above all loved God. Maybe then would they see somewhere that portrayed something of God, and somewhere the gospel could be preached without the Christians in the church getting in the way of it by being stupid.

Laying lives down

When a child at church came to me the other day with a picture as a present for me. Turns out the picture was of me and she’d written my name under the picture too. I have to say, I was really quite touched and also really grateful for it too. I didn’t really get a good look at it until she’d left. Then I realised there must have been a mistake, I know that she’s only 4, and she’d tried hard with the picture, but it was terrible. I only had one eye, and currently have 2, one leg was a lot shorter than the other, my hair isn’t curly, my ears are fairly level as far as I know, also my legs have some width to them, not just straight thin lines down to my feet, that incidentally don’t both stick straight out sideways! My name was spelled wrong too. Ah well, it was free wasn’t it.

Thing is, the picture itself doesn’t look a great deal like me, but it is pretty similar to me in other ways. It’s not a photo, and even photos aren’t perfect, but that’s like me I’m not perfect am I?! If you know me, you’ll know that for certain. If not, I’m not. So like the picture isn’t perfect: neither am I. But if I’m not perfect, whose fault is that? I’m pretty sure it’s not God’s fault. I believe he made me how he wanted me, but still that didn’t make me perfect because the bible tells us “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Rom 3:23) Also, I still do things, all the time that He doesn’t want me to do, I fail every day, and lots of times each day too. Problem for me is this, God’s perfect and the only people that get to go to heaven and spend eternity with Him are the people that are perfect too; but “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

It’d be perfectly right of God to look at me when I stand before him in judgment and Him say to me:

“You disgusting, lazy, adulterous, lustful, lying, thieving, swearing, idolater!” And then send me from Him.
So back to the picture I was given. It was drawn in pencil, so when I get home with it I could take a rubber to it and try to solve some of the problems with it, maybe add another eye and level up my ears. But even then they wouldn’t be right, they wouldn’t be perfect. In fact with my drawing skills they might be worse than it started out. Again it’s just like me, I do sometimes think I can sort things out myself that I need God to do. Thing is, I’m not God: that’s job’s taken. No matter how hard we try or how good an artist you may be we can’t make ourselves right before God, we’re not perfect and we can’t make ourselves perfect.

Here’s some bad news though, God is going to judge us, but in a harsher way than I did with the picture. He will be ruthless, He’s got the standard he wants for us; and if we don’t measure up we don’t get into Heaven.

There’s some small print, well there is in my Bible, but that’s because it’s quite a small one. If you we’ve all got a picture drawn of us, none of them perfect, God’s giving you the option, if you want, to do a bit of a trade. If you’re willing to lay your life down before God, and lay your picture down, even though it’s not perfect, it’s not going to measure up by God’s standards, He’ll swap your picture, your imperfect life for life everlasting.

This isn’t as simple as it sounds at first. There’s only one way this could possibly work. It includes a word that some people don’t like as well, that word is Jesus. If it wasn’t for Jesus, this exchange isn’t an option for you. Jesus was perfect in every way, He did nothing wrong. Then He died the perfect death. He was beaten bloody, whipped and nailed up for you. Every wrong thing you’ve ever done, ever will do, can be paid for if only you’ll accept Jesus invitation. He invites you to hang all your wrong doings on Him. He promises to forgive if you ask. He’s the only way, one thing He said was “No-one comes to the Father except through me.” If there’s only 1 way somewhere, and you want to get there, that’s the only way you can go. There are no loop holes, no cheats, just the one way.

Sometimes I let things get in the way of God, and of what He wants me to be doing. Sometimes I try and sort my picture out by myself, and sometimes I think I can hide from him. I can’t do any of these things.

But what God asks is that if you want the forgiveness offered through Jesus you have to lay down your life to him as a living sacrifice. Jesus was the sacrifice once and for all, so we have the option to be living sacrifices for Jesus.

There’s a book in the Bible called Micah, and in there it says this:

With what shall I come before the LORD
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?

Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:6-8.)

So what’s that for us?
If we’re going for this forgiveness offered, if we’ve already taken it, we still need to be these living sacrifices, a sacrifice doesn’t stop being a sacrifice once it’s served it’s purpose, it dies to fulfill it’s job, are you willing to lay down your life before God, with all your imperfections too, to gain the greatest reward? You can’t hide things from God, but He can help you sort them.

Thought of the week

Jesus tells us to take our cross (Luke 9:23), but what’s he really going on about? Well I’ve had a think and this is what I’ve come up with. For starters he’s saying it to his disciples, his closest friends, but does that mean it’s relevant to us now? I think it’s got to be; if you call yourself a Christian, a follower of Christ, and disciple of Jesus then I think he’s saying it to you and me too. So he’s saying it to us: it’s not an easy statement to read lightly and I think that’s why he said it in this way. It was said at a time when carrying a cross would have been associated with death, as prisoners that were going to be crucified had to carry the cross to the site of their crucifiction themselves. Also carrying a cross isn’t easy, for a start it’s a big thing, it’s not something that you can hide when you’re carrying it! It’s not like a “Smile Jesus loves you” shirt that you can pull a woolly rainbow jumper over, or a WWJD bracelet that you can forget to put back after you’ve had a shower, it’s huge, if you’re carrying it it’s going to be noticed. So surely if you’re going to follow Jesus, like carrying a cross, it has to be obvious to people around you. That doesn’t mean by taking off your rainbow woolly fair trade jumper and letting people see your “Smile Jesus loves you” shirt, or your WWJD wristband, it’s got to be in your walk. By that I don’t mean pretend to struggle when you’re walking, but it has to shine out of what you do, everything in your life should reflect Jesus, not just your words or clothes. Another thing is there’s no middle ground to carrying something. You’re either carrying it, or you’re not. So it’s up to you if you want to pick up your cross or not. You can’t sit on the fence with this, dragging it on the floor behind you isn’t a halfway house, it’s not carrying it! Also it’s not going to be easy, when Jesus carried his cross up the mount Moriah it was a struggle, not just because it’s big and heavy, but because he had been beaten and whipped, even though he’d done nothing wrong. So it’ll be a struggle for us too, but at least for some of us we haven’t been beaten and whipped like Jesus was. The final thought on this is it’s something to persist in, the verse says it’s some that is to be done daily, but the other reason I think it’s something to persist in is this: where would we be if Jesus hadn’t gone all the way to the cross for us? If He’d decided I wasn’t worth all the pain, or you weren’t, where would we be? Where would we end up?

So it’s not sounding too appealing this taking up your cross, but it’s something Jesus has told us to do, not just mentioned as a passing thought that we might possibly thinking of looking at if we’re an evangelical! There’s an up side to it all though, as you might expect with Jesus. After Jesus ascended to heaven his spirit came down, and is available to the believers, and this is something that can help us to do what he asks of us, so we no longer have to go it alone, he’ll help to achieve what he wants us to achieve. Lastly, if you accept Jesus as your saviour and what he says, you’ll be able to stand before him with confidence on the day of judgment and he’ll say to you “well done good and faithful servant”. I don’t know about you, but I certainly want Jesus to say that to me.