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Thursday, June 18, 2015

When God's Children Fight

It doesn’t sound good does it? I mean, is that the image we want to portray to the world that Christians fight? Well I have news for you, they already know. The way Christians manage dispute, and the way we deal with the resulting consequences of the dispute, are what the world sees.  Sometimes on television, sometimes in their local churches.   

Many non-Christians believe that Christians should not fight, that we should not make mistakes, that we should not drop the ball.  I have news for you, we are human beings. We will mess up, we will drop the ball, and we will make mistakes.  Part of our transformation is however, that we are willing to correct, to change.  When we become Christians, we are supposed to grow in our knowledge of Christ.  That means we cannot keep the same bad attitudes and dirty habits.  We will not necessarily change overnight, but we should not be anywhere near the same a year or 30 years after we become Christians!  Unfortunately, some Christians do not change.  So you will see the same bad attitude and not much change, year after year after year!

I think this is the struggle most non-Christians have.  They see many Christians acting and talking like non-Christians and they get confused.  Most non-Christians will tell you that although they are not Christians themselves, they know how a Christian should act.  It sounds superficial, but that is the thought process of many non-Christians.  The fact is, most people at least in America, identify with the Christian faith. But identifying with a faith and living the life are two completely different things. 

For those Christians who more than identify, who truly believe, we still run the risk of messing up from time to time. Sorry!  There is a further difference though.  And here’s the clincher, the true Christian’s mess ups should be fewer as the years go by.  After all, like any relationship we are truly interested in cultivating, we want to learn the other person’s personality.  In fact we take on aspects of their personality.  We want to please that person, and we want to stay in relationship with that person.  We learn what makes them tick, what makes them upset, and what makes them happy.  Our relationship with Christ is pretty similar, except that we get more out of the relationship than he does.  In my opinion.  He loves us unconditionally, he wants us to spread the good news about how wonderful a relationship with him would be.  But he also wants us to reflect his attitude toward life, toward others, the more we become like him.

He wants us to be more forgiving. He wants us to be about his business instead of gossiping, backstabbing, and jostling for position.  God wants us to recognize our weaknesses and work on them daily, realizing we will never be perfect. He wants us to be more like him every day, every year, whether it is a year or 30 years from now! 

When we have disagreements especially with other Christians, God wants us to resolve those issues with him in mind.  He wants us to act like brothers and sisters, not mortal enemies.  He does not want us to go for the jugular, pounding each other into the ground, trying to destroy each other.  Those are all worldly and definitely ungodly actions.   We should not forget who or whose we are when we disagree with each other.  If we cannot resolve differences amongst each other like proper Christians, we are showing a bad example to the world.  And we are proving that we have not grown and probably have no intention of doing so.  We are just identifying with Christianity, but not living the life.

God will have the last word in every aspect of our relationship with him, and with each other.  He will give us increase and he will admonish us, because he loves us.  The question is, will you just identify with Christianity, or will you be about the life?