Thursday 10 June 2010

Real Christianity.

I have been challenged about a recent post i wrote by some comments from friends. I leave a link below if you have no got time to scroll down to find it :


Evangelism.

"I need to stand up for my faith and tell them what I believe but its important too that my actions match my words. If they can hear from me of God's love and then see me living it out in a real practical way then the Holy Spirit can use that for true evangelism. But unless I am doing both then nothing is likely to come of my attempts at evangelism. " is the part I think that I may have written in error. By that I mean my error is that I have not defined what living it out means.  It is very easy to write something like this about living it out but without actually defining what you mean by living it out. The world has a view of Christians as perfect. This set apart race that do everything right and are generally just so holy that they really stand out from the crowd. Or are they the hypocrites who preach goodness but live in another way. 
Scott writes " It's when we mess up that we can tell people that we're sorry we've messed up, but we don't preach a message that we have to be perfect, rather we preach a message of a gracious God who forgives us and loves us even though we aren't perfect!"

Lorna (or the Wife as I sometime call her agrees) " I think showing people a realness in the faith is important. That we are not perfect and that we don't claim to be is a massive witness I think. Its like with the kids, when we make a mistake or do something wrong we say sorry or explain to them that we were wrong and we shouldn't have done it. We teach them forgiveness by showing them the need for forgiveness."

So instead of putting down phrases that sound spiritual but actually I have not thought through I should be concentrating on what is real Christianity and what that actually looks like.
To be honest  there is just one difference between me and a non Christian. Thats Jesus! Without him I am in the same mess of sin as everyone else and I really am no different. Let me not delude myself I am not suddenly better just because I have Christ. It does not make me somehow super spiritual or better than anyone else. I am trying to live better so I can reflect Christ, not for my own benefit, but as my act of worship and so I can be his witness. But when I mess up I show myself to be no better than anyone else but and this is what I can show people. I can repent and say sorry. I can show them Christ who loves to forgive sins. I can lead them to him like a blind beggar leading another blind beggar because he knows where water is. I think my friends are right in what they say, read their comments in full because I agree with what they say. I can show them a God who forgives the most wretched of sinners. People like me for instance.

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