God is not stupid

Many of us have heard of, if not seen, the movie 'God is not dead'.  It was a great reminder of the fact that God is indeed alive and well, and living...in the universe and in the hearts of his followers. But sometimes I wonder how many of us realize God is not stupid.  You see, I believe many of us as Christians think we can keep doing things we know are not Christ like, and then say silly things like 'God knows my heart'.  We say these things 10, 20, and even 30 years after we became Christ followers.  We say and do petty things, we push back EVERY TIME we are pushed, we simply do not grow.

Don't get me wrong.  No one is perfect, not even Christians.  The world likes to laugh and make fun of us when we mess up, but the fact is no one will ever be perfect.  The key is to do our best, to daily be more like Jesus.  This means we can't push back every time someone says or does something hurtful.  It means we sometimes have to smile when we really want to...do something else.  Being a Christian is a daily fight to be more like Jesus.  Some days we will fall short, and on those days we have to ask God to forgive us.  We may even have to ask our offender to forgive us. Yes, that is the life of a Christian. We have to be willing to forgive and to ask forgiveness.  

What should be happening, is we should be maturing in our faith.  We should not still be allowing the things that offended us when we first became Christians, to be offending us so many years later.  There are times when we will have to smile when someone says something stupid, remain calm when we are obviously being tested, and ask God to help us when we feel we might say or do the wrong thing.  We must want to mature. When we continue to mature, the nonsense that used to bother us no longer will, or not as much.  We see ignorance for what it is.  We see immaturity, from non-Christians as well as Christians, for what it is.  

Christians, let's stop acting like we think God is stupid.  Too many Christians are dying around the world for their faith while the rest of us are living a life of pettiness, hatefulness, bad attitudes, and lacking in growth. As human beings, we all have struggles.  As Christians, if we take those struggles to Jesus; he will help us.  He will heal us, he will mature us.  We just have to ask him, to allow him.       

Convert or die!

I never thought I would hear those words during my life time: convert or die!  The stories coming out of Iraq right now are fluid, but they are not changing much.  People--Christians and other ethnic minorities are being chased out of Iraq simply because they do not maintain the same beliefs as the militants that are chasing them.  Some of these people left with just the clothes on their backs.

But what I feel is the saddest story to date, something I have heard in the flurry of stories, was about the man who renounced his vow to Jesus, only to be killed anyway. I hope this story is not true, but if it is, I hope he had time to repent and that he his soul went to heaven.
These militants are so evil that people are running because they know whether or not they renounce their faith, they will most likely be killed.  Many of us have seen the images of the affected: fleeing, waiting on the top of a mountain, and burying family members in shallow graves.  Many of the Christians who ran for their lives are waiting in churches.  We have seen other images too difficult to watch, of Christians and others who have not renounced their faith, being shot in the head and pushed into some body of water.  The ground covered in the blood of the slain.

From the time I heard about these horrors, I posed the question: could we 'Western Christians' handle what is happening to the Christians in Iraq and other parts of the world? Could we drop everything and leave our homes with just the clothes on our backs?  Are we tough enough to stand up for our belief in Jesus with a gun held to our head, or the head of a family member?  Do we really believe? What do we believe?  Do we really believe in Jesus no matter what?

Christians have been killed since the beginning.  We have been fed to lions, boiled in oil, and run through with spears from the time Jesus rose from the dead.  What is happening now is just a continuation.  I believe people are shocked at the television images because as a human race we thought we had evolved, become more accepting of each other, more tolerant.  But that is not the case, indeed I do not believe it ever will be the case.  We are too beset with ourselves and with our causes.  We are not willing to live and let live. Actually, that includes we Christians.  When we become believers we are mandated to go and spread the good news.  The issue is that everyone thinks their religious belief is the good news.

We Christians however, believe we have the true good news.  Why? Because the one true God does not compel us to convert people by pointing a gun at their heads.  We do not shoot people in the head at point blank range while videotaping so that we can then show the murders on television around the world.  We live our lives by example, not by beating people over the head with our beliefs.  We believe in a God who lives forever.  We believe in I am that I am, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.  His word does not change. We believe in a Jesus who died and rose from the dead and lives forever more.

When we become believers, our hearts and minds change.  We no longer give in to murderous rages, trying to control other human beings with the threat of death.  We believe in the one true God.  We believe.

Trust and obey

Many of us are familiar with the hymn 'Trust and Obey', written by John Sammis. 'Trust and obey, for there is no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey'.  

Many times I have looked back at situations in my life, thankful I had obeyed God when He told me to do something.

Most of the time what He tells me to do is downright scary. I feel foolish, wondering if I really heard from Him. I mentioned in a much earlier post, that many years ago God put on my heart to buy a meal for a homeless man. I did NOT want to do it. I tried to pretend I had not heard God. Well, as Christians, we all know how that goes. Once He tells us to do something He's not going to change His mind.

I believe that when God tells us to do something, He will not allow us to be hurt. Now if the recipient declines, that's not our problem, we were obedient. That's what God wants from us, obedience. When we obey God, He knows He can trust us for bigger things.

Many years have passed since that first command. When I hear from God now, I do not have as much apprehension as I did in those days, but admittedly, depending on what it is I can still be scared.  I must also admit that there have been times lately where He has put someone on my mind and I have allowed busyness to get in the way of following up with that person or persons. That, I believe, is a kind of disobedience. Our lives and schedules are quite busy, but there is nothing like God's voice to stop us in our tracks. Besides, we have so much technology at our finger tips that a quick text or email is available from our smart phones. There is no excuse.

These days, God has been asking me to do bigger things, scary things, outside the box things. I've been scared, but I've been obeying. I'm getting happy returns, and restorations. These results I know for a fact are God restorations. I know this because God is not the author of confusion. It pays to trust and obey.