Christianity in the Last Days

I was going to only post a new blog post tomorrow, but I feel lead to do it now. As you know I only blog when I run into what I believe to be a relevant topic.

The topic today is on Christianity in the Last Days specifically round about now - 2012.
This blog may be a two-part, but we'll see how it goes, I'm not sure yet.

I've encountered recently a dilemma just in life in general regarding how us as Christians fit into the world. We live in this world, yet we are not of this world. Most Born Again Christians would understand the meaning of that. Let me try and explain it for those who are not Believers. The physical world is satan's kingdom (you will always notice I never spell his name with a capital letter.....I never give things beneath me more glory than they deserve, which in his case would amount to nothing). These are things like, clubs, alcohol, drugs, porn, bad language, I could go on and on but I'm sure we get the picture....the things of the physical world. When we become Born Again and give our lives to Christ, we now live in the Spirit and we turn from the things of the world, they matter no more to us, they have no appeal to us. Because the world can offer us nothing, what Jesus offers is eternal and when considering what you would want more, there is no contest, for me Jesus wins every time purely because as I said the world has nothing to offer me that I want, but Jesus offers everything I want and need. So when you become a Christian, you die to yourself, you turn from the things of the world and of the flesh and you walk in the Spirit. Which is why we say we live in this world but we are not of this world. May be a little bit much for non-believers to wrap their head around, but give it some thought.......Please!! please!! don't take me wrong I am not in ANYWAY  knocking non-believers, it's just that I understand that they can't be expected to understand the things of God and of the Spirit and of Heaven the way Christians do having not been given the understanding of these things the way Christians have.

As a quick note....I NEVER knock or judge anybody in my blog for any reason whatsoever. I neither have the right nor the authority to do so, so it will never happen.

Now I'm gonna give you 2 things to think about..... for most Christians this would be a reminder of what they already know.
The Bible says do not be unequally yoked.....this means do not mix or be involved with or even in a relationship of any kind with a non-believer. In the Bible times loads of goods, or people or whatever were drawn by ox-drawn vehicles or carriages. The 2 oxen that were drawing the vehicle were connect side by side to each other by a solid metal bar which was connected to a harness around the animal and was there to keep them side by side, the bar was called a yoke. Now ask yourself this, what would have happened if the one of the oxen was strong and fit and muscular and could draw the vehicle with ease due its sheer strength, the other was weak, frail and just generally not quite as strong.....I'll tell you...it resulted most of the time in bad consequences. Over-turned vehicles, and other accidents - these oxen were unequally yoked. Now what would be the result of both oxen being of the same fitness level, the same size, the same strength etc? I'll tell you....perfect harmony and the vehicle could be drawn safely and without incident - these oxen were equally yoked.
Another analogy....most Christians I assume have heard of the chair example. For those of you who haven't I'll explain. One person stands on a chair, the other on the floor in front of the chair. The person on the chair represents a Christian, the person on the floor represents a non-believer. (This is not indicative of Christians being better, or "higher up" than anybody). Now the person on the chair will attempt to the pull the person on the floor up onto the chair with them - how easy do you find this? then the person on the floor will attempt to pull the person on the chair down onto the ground.......which one is easier? Yes, it is easier to pull someone down than to pull someone up.

Which brings me to the dilemma I have come to think about recently.....and I will admit I have yet to reach an answer, this is a question I am still grappling with and I have come to the conclusion of a few scenarios so please feel free to educate me if you so wish.

A few months ago I met a woman who claims to be a Christian and very devout in her religion to the point that when we were visiting there and she popped in by us, she decided to be extremely rude and got up and left due to the fact that some of us were having a beer. She felt that we were drinking and she could not condone that behavior and would rather not be around us. I found that to be very snobbish and trying to prove that she was morally superior to the rest of us. And needless to say I was highly offended by her actions and found her to be extremely rude in her behavior. What she came across as saying in her actions was that we were beneath her and she did not want to associate with us. We were not having a massive drunken riot, we were sitting around having a pleasant conversation and some of us were drinking a beer. Apparently as I said this was offensive to her and she made an excuse and left.

This made me think of something that I read a few months ago, about a company director who would never socialize with the other people in the office after work in the company bar room on a Friday as some companies do. He was a Born Again Christian and would go straight home, because he didn't drink he did not want to be in a bar and be associated with that lifestyle. Understandable, but also shortsighted. What he didn't realize was that his employees saw him as a snob, in their minds he believed himself to be too good to socialize with them, that he felt he was morally superior to them and they saw him as arrogant and self-righteous. News of this belief among his staff got back to him and no, he didn't get angry, it did make him examine himself. And he realized that Christians are meant to be as wise as serpents and yet as humble and doves. And he realized that inspite of the fact that he was a Christian, that was no reason for him to not socialize with the rest of the people in the company....and to spend time with them and enjoy an early Friday afternoon off. So he made a decision that every Friday he would join the rest of the employees in the company bar after work, he realized that this didn't mean he had to drink, but it didn't stop him being there and being apart of things. So he made his decision and on a Friday afternoon when the company closed early he would spend time in the pub with his employees and enjoying have a relaxing end of another week time with them. He only ordered himself cokes while he was there and he never drank and he was never expected to and the employees also realized that they had read him wrong and that he wasn't as arrogant or self-righteous as they had originally thought. And they realized that he was approachable and actually a really nice person.

Now which of these 2 people do you think was wrong in their actions? my answer would be the first. My answer would be that the lady in the first story was an exact example of the pharisees of Jesus' time and the second more what Jesus expects of us or can I say the way Christians are meant to act.
The pharisees of Jesus day would stone a woman to death for committing adultery, Jesus took that same woman by the hand, helped her up and challenged the pharisees that of those of them who had no sin to throw the first stone. After the pharisees had lost that battle, he turned to the woman, blessed her and told her to "go and sin no more" that same woman followed Jesus right to the foot of the cross.
Can we see the difference?
The woman in the first story represents a religious, doctrinated, regimented, legalistic mind governed by the law and as we learnt in earlier posts the law condemns.
The man in the second story represents Jesus' nature, Jesus' came to save and forgive not to condemn.
Do we see the difference?
Jesus, healed, saved and worked with prostitutes, gamblers, alcoholics, the lowest of the low that society had thrown away, he never turned one of them away, everybody was given a chance and loved unconditionally with unending and unbreakable love, he opened His arms wide to welcome them.
Somebody said something to me on Saturday which has stuck in my mind and has made me think - if u can allow another person to corrupt your faith, how strong was your faith to begin with? Something to think about.

As I teenager I touched the world once too often a little bit too much and I ended up being sucked into it and walking away from my faith and I will admit, I allowed other people to corrupt my faith, which I will also admit was not very strong at the time.

But I have come to a believe and a view on the subject and it is this....also taken from my own experience. We get Christians in the world who have given other Christians a bad rep, mostly through their actions and the way they handle things and the way they conduct themselves. First of all you get these street corner preachers, that shout and scream scripture at people and warn them to repent of their sins etc I'm sure we've all seen them and if not we know they exist. I was reading something where the person was talking about these street corner preachers and he said "they will get the exact amount of attention that they deserve" and I wholeheartedly agree with that. Did we see anywhere in the Bible that Jesus went and stood on a street corner and started shouting and screaming at people and acting like a madman? No. He went onto mountain tops, into synagogues and taught peacefully and quietly to all who wanted to hear his teachings.
If God is building us up and teaching us be like Christ, what in our right mind would make us think that God would want us to go and stand on a street corner and act like a madman and scream and shout at people? as Christians we are taught to me be humble, where is the humility in that?

Then we come to my experience and this has shaped my believe in how to bring people to Christ. I went to a private Christian school and this was the place where I was first introduced to my Lord and Saviour. I was christened and raised in the Methodist Church etc as is expected, but I never knew what true Christianity was until I went to that school. However, being in that school I got the sense that I was obligated to give my life to Christ, they would use the concept of going to hell if you are not Born Again (which is true) to convince the children to come to Christ. Please don't get me wrong, I don't believe that they used this tactic on purpose or was one of those Christian institutions that attempts to control by fear, Jesus' doesn't do fear, "He has given us a spirit of peace and love and of a sound mind", so I don't think it was intentional. But I came to Christ for the wrong reasons at that time, I did it out of a fear of going to hell and needless to say my faith at that time didn't last long. I always felt, not good enough for Jesus, like I had to constantly prove myself to be good enough for Him, I always felt insecure, I questioned His love, I questioned whether I was really saved, I doubted myself a lot. And it didn't work, it made me weak as a Christian and it made me an easy target to be lured back into the world system. I didn't just backslide, I did a complete face plant in spectacular fashion.
I came back to Christ in April of this year and this time, I did it because I wanted to....it was my own personal decision that I wanted to follow Jesus, I wanted to be where ever He is and that I wanted to be tethered to my Saviour until the end of time. I discovered a love for Him I had never known before and I came to Him out of my own free will. And that I believe is what should happen, giving your life to Christ should be a personal decision, one that is made out of a person's own free will because it is what they want not for any other reason. Because doing it for any other reason you are going to fail.

And I have gotten sidetracked...I apologize...you get Christians who impose their beliefs on others, who hammer people with it and they do it at the worst times and I tend to believe that doing this makes people resent and oppose Christians and Christianity even more. They see a Christian coming and think "here comes another sermon, let me run so long". No, I believe that Jesus commissioned us to preach the gospel to every nation, tribe and tongue, but I was also taught by a missionary friend years and years ago that we need to earn the right to share the gospel with the people in our lives. If you've just met a new friend, or a new group of friends and say you get invited to braai for example and you arrive at the braai and they're all drinking etc and you either start a sermon on the sin of drinking and giving them a speech and lecturing them. Or you say to them "sorry, you drink, I can't be associated with you" and you leave, first of all that's rude and it's bad manners and it's arrogant and it's snobbish and it's giving the impression that you think you're morally superior. And I guarantee you, that will be the last time you ever see or speak to that person/people again.
No, we are called to be ambassadors for Christ and in a dark world we are meant to be beacons of light in that dark world. Something or someone that people can grab onto for help in times of need and to find a safe place and when they need to be shown the right way. And I also believe that the best way that we can represent Christ without bombarding people with scripture and hammering people with it, is to live Christianity 24/7/365 and not drag our Lord's name through the mud. Actions speak louder than words, let the fruit of the spirit manifest in you and live it for all the world to see. Let people see Jesus in us and let them be lead to the cross....by their own will that way.
Tall, short, thin, fat, ugly, pretty, semi-ugly, semi-pretty, mentally unbalanced, sick, broken, shattered, prostitutes, drug users, drug dealers, pimps, murderers, liars, thieves, adulterers, nobody is exempt Jesus will accept them all and in following Jesus we are expected to do the same. I'm not saying accept or condone their sin, we hate the sin, but we love the person, because the person is God's perfect creation, we are created in His image and that is why we love them, but we don't love the sin.

I have plenty awesome friends in my life who are not Christians at all by any means, but they also know that I am a Christian and my faith is unshakeable and it is a part of what make me, me. And they know if my being Christian is not something they can accept about me then, unfortunately as unwanted and as sad as it is they're welcome to say goodbye. But they know that I will not compromise my beliefs or my faith for anything in this world. They also know that I will never impose or bombard or hammer them with my beliefs or lecture them etc because I believe that this is not something God would do, He is a gentlemen and He will NEVER force Himself on you, so if He wouldn't do it, what give us the right to think we can do what He would never do to us. God, can right this moment, raise His right hand and put mankind on their knees and make them bow to Him, but He doesn't want to do that, and believe me we don't want that. And that would make Him nothing more than a tyrant and a monster which is the exact opposite to what He is, He is a loving, forgiving, gracious, merciful, kind Father to His children. That's why he gave us free will, so we can be able to think for ourselves and choose freely to follow Him and know that should we choose to do that, He will always be there waiting for us.

That's why my belief is, don't turn your back on the world or people who are non believers or refuse to associate with them, we are all people, we are all sinners and we as Christians are called to be the light of the world and to be ambassadors for Christ and live Christianity.

If you take nothing else from this tonight at least take this.....your actions speak louder than your words, and if you are without sin go ahead and throw the first stone.

Night everyone
Till next time
God Bless
xxx

Shalom