Finally found some time to sit down and reflect upon the week. It is Midsummer in Sweden and we have been invited to visit friends from the church at their home in the countryside. The reason we love going to their home is that every year they invite their unchurched friends to join the celebration and together we have a lot of fun together. This brings me to the topic I want to discuss, namely that as Christians we are being watched.
I sometimes wonder if we as Christians really stop to think about how we are representing God? Have you ever thought about how the things we do and say affect non-Christians? I am sure we all worry about what our Christian brother and sisters in the church think about what we say and do, but how often do we really think about how non-believers see us? In fact, what we do and say affects the non-Christians around us far more than it does the Christians. In other words, those who have chosen not to believe are looking for us to fail so they can justify their non-belief. Just think about the responsibility that is placed on our shoulders. Do we really understand that we can be either good or bad ambassadors for Christ simply by the words we speak or the way we live our lives?
One thing I have learned about the lost is that unlike Christians, they really don't always know why they believe what they believe. Of course there are some exceptions, but I have found that in most cases non-believers just believe what they believe because that's what they believe. They believe it because they feel it, which makes it real for them. As Christians we have a core and a foundation for our beliefs. Our beliefs are based on a living relationship with Jesus Christ, but there is also lots of evidence (scientific, archaeological, historical) to support what we believe. On the other hand I have found that many of my non-believing friends have very few places to go to support their belief system. With nowhere else to go, they look for us to give them a reason to deny God.
Have you noticed that every time someone discovers some incredible new evidence that the Bible is wrong; media nearly always jumps on the bandwagon and automatically portrays it as proven truth? When that happens, non-believers hold onto every word and believe it without evidence because they need to. Fortunately, those kinds of things don't happen very often so where are non-believers looking for something to hold onto? They are looking at us! They take notice of how we act, how we treat people and what we say, and they hang on to our failures to help justify their non-belief. Think about it every time we do or say something we shouldn't have said, we are being judged. Our words and actions have consequences and when we fail God gets the blame and non-believers have a reason to reject God.
We need to remember that we are walking, talking representatives for Jesus. What do you think a non-believer thinks when we criticize another Christian or another church? What do you think a non-believer thinks when we deliberately hurt people with words because we couldn't control our anger? We've all been guilty of these things, but we need to think about how these things affect the non-believers who hear them. We need to try to represent God as best we can, so we don't give the non-believers more reasons than already exist to reject God. Non-believers should be able to look at us and wonder what it is we have, and how they can get it.
As you might understand what we are discussing today is very personal to me since I continually find myself failing in this area. As Christ-followers our most important role on this earth is to find ways to bring those who don't believe to a relationship with Jesus. If we can't control the words that come out of our mouths, and the way we live our lives, then we won't ever be able to represent God the way he deserves to be represented. 1 Peter 2:5 says, “And now God is building you, as living stones, into his spiritual temple; what's more, you are God's holy priests, who offer the spiritual sacrifices that please him because of Jesus Christ”. Jesus spoke directly about our responsibility to represent him in Matthew 5:16 when he said, “In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father”.
We need to let our good deeds shine out for all to see, but we also need to recognize that our bad deeds are out there shining for the world to see too. We owe it to Jesus to do the best we can to honor his sacrifice, and we need to recognize that the lost of the world are watching to see how were doing.
Challenge:
Ask God to use you this week to make a difference in somebody’s life and shine out for all to see.