It is time

Perception

Late last year I went back to the Caribbean Island my family is from, to attend the funeral of a family member.  Of course it was a sad occasion, but as preparations were underway, some days we took the opportunity to stop for lunch at a nearby restaurant.  I walked ahead of the family members I had traveled with that day, to get to the restaurant; I was hungry, and wanted to get a table.  Dressed in a sundress and flip flops I walked into the restaurant searching for the perfect table.  A young man sitting at a nearby table stopped eating, looked at me said something I will never forget: 'you are impressive'.  I said 'excuse me?' He repeated himself.  I said 'you don't even know me, how do you know I'm impressive?' He said 'it's the way you carry yourself.' I was silent for a few seconds, taken aback, and then I said 'thank you'.  He said 'you're welcome' and turned back to his food. I found a table for the group I was with.

I realize as human beings, we will never be perfect. Christian or not. But what I do know is that whether or not we are perfect, whether or not we realize it, we are being watched.  We are being watched when we mess up and we are being watched when we do well.  I read a FaceBook post a few days ago, where an elderly woman eating at a restaurant, apparently wrote a note to her waiter impressed by the way he carried himself.  He reminded her of her deceased son.  Whether or not this story is true, the fact is we have to ask ourselves how are we being perceived, how do we carry ourselves? Does it matter? Of course it does.  Those of us who are Christians know this is especially true.  We know that many times people are watching to see us mess up, and some people in fact some want us to do well.

As Christians, we are representatives of Jesus.  As such, we must live our lives as much as possible above reproach.  We may make a bad decision once in a while or say something we should not have, but we must push to become the person God wants us to be.  We must be a blessing to everyone we interact with.

How do we emanate the right perception, how do we carry ourselves in a good and positive way? Being a person who emanates a positive perception to others can start with simple actions.  We should treat people with respect and dignity regardless of their station in life.  That may sound snobbish or uppity, but the fact is, many people mistreat those whom they think are 'beneath' them. No human is beneath another human, God made us all, and in His image.  If we remember that, treating everyone we meet with respect will come naturally.  We all want to be heard, and sometimes just being heard by you is all another human being will get.

Sometimes we will miss the mark, but the key is to try continually, it will be worth it.  I will be honest, I struggle with patience.  When we travel to the islands my family and I are from (we are from two different islands that are governed by one flag) we have to take a taxi from the airport to the pier, and then take a ferryboat to the island of our final destination. On the flight from the U.S. a passenger was having trouble storing his luggage in the overhead compartment.  I had no choice but to stand in the aisle, waiting for him to get his luggage stored.  Little did I know that I would be sitting next to him for our trip from The U.S. to the Caribbean.  God does have a sense of humor.  He points out our faults to us, giving us a chance to fix them. The gentleman thanked me profusely for my patience, which made me feel guilty!  Because I really just wanted to sit down.  We chatted on the trip to The Caribbean, and when we landed he thanked me again for my patience and insisted on paying our fare from the airport to the pier.  He would not be refused.  We thanked him and took our taxi to the pier.

Whenever I find myself in a situation where my patience is tested, I remember the above mentioned experiences.  The thing about relationship with Christ is that when He knows we are chasing after Him, when we try, and when we fail; He will test us but He will not leave us.  He will teach us through experiences such as the above, but He will not embarrass us or call us out.  We just have to trust Him to grow us, allow Him to grow us.

When Moses was turning his leadership over to Joshua when the Israelites were about to enter The Promised Land, he said many encouraging things to the people, but one of the things that stood out for me was this: 'The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you.  Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged.' Deuteronomy 31:8.  I know that The Lord is going ahead, before me, to teach me, even reprimand me.  He wants me to be of a positive and good perception.  Amen!

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.

GOD BLESS AMERICA (Lyrics) - CELINE DION

What exactly is it?

I've been thinking about it a lot lately.  Many people dismiss it as 'religious', 'holy roller', 'old-school', and no longer relevant.  Even Christians in an effort to seem relevant, do not use the term.  What really bothers me is that some Christians believe we must stay away from certain terms and tenets of our Bible, to be relevant to people who view us as crazy for our beliefs anyway.  In fact, these very people want us to stop believing.  They think that we can just change our minds from believing in a book of ‘stories’ written 2000 years ago about a god that probably does not even exist.  For that very reason, the fact that our beliefs are 2000 years old, we should forget it and 'get into the 21st century'.  We should 'go along to get along', and 'live and let live'.  If we do not comply, we are 'narrow-minded', 'hateful', and anti-anything that is now openly accepted.  

I do not know what is more treacherous though, the belief that Christians should just stop believing, or the Christians who have indeed stopped believing.  If they ever believed at all.  Believe or not, The Word is The Word, and those of us who know The Word realize we cannot just stop believing.  There's a saying, 'stand for something or fall for anything'.  I do not know who said it, but I agree.  I agree not because I want to be stubborn and anti-establishment; but because there is something deep within me, deeper than an impression, that believes.  It is a living, breathing, confidence in someone bigger than me.  That someone created me, and when I worship Him, my heart and my spirit come into agreement with His.  How does one just walk away from that and stop believing?

Am I being asked to stop believing in my creator so that our new society of ‘go along to get along' feels less threatened? In America, it used to be that people were allowed to believe what they wanted.  Now when we believe, we can be accused of hate crimes.  It seems the reverse is happening.  It is the Christians who are being ostracized.  That however, has been the case since the beginning.  We are used to being ostracized.  

At the mention of the name Jesus or God, some people become quite angry.  They will probably become angrier when they realize that 'holiness' is a relevant term.  It is not a religious, old-school, or holy-roller term.  It is relevant to those of us who still believe.  You see, the Word says 'Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.' --Hebrews 12:14.  So for those of us who believe, we must be holy if we want to go to Heaven.  For believers, Heaven is what it is ultimately all about.  But while we are here, holiness means loving everyone, doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, and it means not changing our minds or 'going along to get along'.

Nowhere in the Word does it tell Christians to hate people, but the Word does tell us to hate sin. Furthermore, the word is quite clear on what sin is.  For those, Christian and non-Christians, who believe we can just interchange, add a little here, take away there; it does not work like that. We either believe the entire Word or none of it.  

Christians will continue to believe the Word.  We will continue to love everyone, and we will continue to hate sin.  We will continue to abide by the laws of our land, but we will not compromise The Word.  It will not always be easy to walk the fine line of obeying The Word and obeying the law, but we will do just that.  Our God, The Word, will direct us.  We believe.