The church preaches the life-changing, sin-forgiving, all-powerful love of Christ that a person can experience in his or her life. We preach the gospel and we pray relentlessly for our unbelieving family and friends. And rightly so because the Word of God is true and so is the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead - that same power that is now at work within us (Eph. 3). There is no other name given in heaven or on earth from which we can be saved.
But I can't help but think: we eat our very words and deface the testimony of Christ when, within our own churches among those who are followers of Jesus, there is envy, dissension, jealousy, pride, gossip, slander, hatred, discord, rage, hypocrisy, malice. No wonder those we are trying to 'witness' to don't see any witness at all.
When we do not allow the Spirit to change us and yet preach Christ's power to change, we not only show ourselves as hypocrites, but we also defame Christ - God himself - in the eyes of the very people we are trying to 'win'.
Time for a reality check.
1 comment:
Hey Deeds - like your thoughts on all this, even though I'm part of the problem. I like how the Desert Fathers talked about being made perfect - it had nothing to do with a life of moral purity, and everything to do with how they loved one another and the world around them. They will know we are Christians by our love, no?
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