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“The unexamined life is not worth living”. . . Socrates
If Church depended on you, what would it look like? It would look exactly like it does because God gave Christ so you could be the church. We get the church we choose by how we practice our faith . . . or do not.
Both Christianity and Islam are growing in the world today, both at alarming or exciting rates, depending on your perspective. This growth will change the nature of both. Islam is growing in the northern continents as Christianity declines there, but also grows in the southern continents. Christianity is growing in the southern continents and in Asia. World religion will change in the next few decades. The changes we have seen in the past few decades are only hints at what to expect. As the affluent seek entertainment, good food, comfort, and other pleasurable experiences, they are also seeking meaning and purpose but in ways different from those who are rushing to the great religions of the world.
Some reflections on life as a Christian
If the Bible is not your primary source of faith understanding, then do you just make it up as you go along?
What kind of God is it that deserves no worship, no prayer, no service? What kind of God gives what is precious and deserves nothing in return other than a casual, passing, and arbitrary nod of acknowledgement? What kind of God is worthy of a bumper sticker or a forwarded email or post on Facebook, but not worthy of a regular time commitment to worship, pray, give, learn, and serve?
Some people just want to believe they believe. Some want other people to believe they believe. Everyone wants to be heard.
Successful churches these days are the ones that market themselves successfully. Faithful churches these days provide ways for those who come to commit themselves in ever deepening ways to discipleship in Christ. Successful churches need to be faithful churches in order that the world might be saved through Christ. Faithful churches need to be successful in order that the world might be saved through Christ.
God's goodness shines in every place we let it, every place we ignore it, and every place where God is. And where is it that God is not? "Open my eye that I may see."
When you complain about the church, are you not the church? When you grumble, what Christian service is it that you are doing? How is it that you honor God with such? Why is it that you expect the best from others, but so little from yourself? Are you not the church?
If you think you are God's gift to humankind, then live like you really are. "Bear fruit worthy of repentance." Matthew 3:8
God doesn't need our attitude. God deserves our best. We were created for love, worship, and faithful service to God. Are we there yet? No. We have a long way to go, but God is faithful and loves us yet.
When prayers are directed toward people, they might fail, but when they are addressed to God they will not fail.
The faithful keep their promises that are good, confess where they do not and ask for God's grace to change, and confess when their promises were not good promises.
Hard truths are the necessary ones. They shape our lives, push us to the edge of our weakness and fear, allowing us to peer over into what might be. In that shaping, pushing, and peering we find faith sufficient for life, discovering within ourselves and others the extraordinary possibilities God intended.
Grumbling distracts from praising God.
Self-centeredness is at the heart of all sin.
A God not worth worshiping is no God at all.
Some people are primarily consumers. They always seem to be asking, "What will I get out of this?" or "What will we get out of this?" The faithful question for Christians is "What will God get out of this?"
A life of goodness and generosity without promise of reward may be the only truly good life.
Blaming someone else is easy. Having the strength of character, integrity, and honesty to accept the consequences of your choices is the better way.
Vengeance consumes the vengeful.
Sometimes I feel like my cup is running over, but when it is not God filling it, then I am too full of myself or my life is too full of someone else's stuff.
Whatever excuses you use not to worship and serve the Lord are your idols.
If a man sows hate, what can he hope to reap? If a man sows violence, what harvest can he expect?
"Religion" is nothing other than the practice of what we believe. "Church" is nothing less than the gathering of those who have faith in Christ for the purposes or worship, prayer, study, service, community, sharing, and giving.
God is quite beyond our ability to comprehend or explain with our words or prove with our science. God is quite beyond our need to believe we can. And yet, like Eve, we want to be like God, so we make up gods with our imaginations, the gods we want rather than the God who is. When we have a genuine experience of the God who is, we find ourselves unworthy of the experience.
And yet, God reaches out to us that we might experience Goodness, Wonder, Awe, Mercy, Redemption, Truth, Love, Faith, Hope, Grace, and embrace those in order that we might worship and serve. We use the best words we have to describe our experience and our expectations of who this God is, but our words only describe the god of our imagination, the god we want, or the god with whom we are disappointed. We claim the True God is accessible, but that certainly must be the case only when we confess that the god of our thinking and knowing is inadequate and we let go of that god to reach out toward the infinite God, at first sensing nothingness (which is the loss of the finite god of our imagining) and then realizing it is not nothingness we have encountered, but rather the infinite God who is Creator, who is Love, who is Truth, who is Life, who Is.
Once upon a time there was a . . . and this . . . lived in . . . Every morning the . . . would . . . and every evening the . . . would . . .
Then one day a new light shone in the . . . and the . . . started to change. Before long the . . . was reflecting the new light because the . . . had become a believer in Jesus Christ. So no longer could the . . . from . . . be called a . . . because now the . . . was a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, a student of Christ's teachings, a child of God's kingdom. No longer was this Christian from . . . so much as this Christian was a citizen of the kingdom of God. This Christian, when asked where they were from, they could answer, "From the Spirit of God. I am a Christian."
John 3:6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.
1 Peter 2:9-10 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
If you believe that "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life;"
if you believe that forgiving others is as important as being forgiven;
if you believe worshiping God is more important than sleeping in on Sunday morning;
if you have a compulsion to read the Bible and discover it has something to say about how you are living your life;
if you desire friendship and believe that Church is a better place to find it than at work or at a bar;
if you look for some way to help someone else whenever you are feeling down;
if your allegiance to Christ is more important than unreflective patriotism to your country;
if you give generously because you believe that giving to your church, giving to help others, and giving to improve your community are the reasons you have the time, talents, and financial resources you have;
if you look for places to serve your Church, to help your neighbors, to care about that random person who happens to be near; or to make your community a better place for all who live there;
if you want people to know God loves them because you have discovered God loves you and you want everyone to know the joy that comes from that knowledge;
if you invite your friends and family and neighbors to your church because your church is a place where you and others work to keep God's love alive for each other.
. . . you might be a Christian.
Edward Everett Hale wrote:
I am only one,
But still I am one.I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
