Good Friday morning! What is a common question to ask of persons when getting to know them? Please don't send answers to that. I'm sure there are as many different questions as there are curious people in the world. One common one that I hear is: what church does he/she go to? Which is followed by some comment like: oh, so he/she's a Catholic/Methodist/Lutheran etc. Why wouldn't any of us be a Christian first? All of us should strive to first live as Christians and let it be known that we follow Christ first in our lives. Certainly we have found by now that a person can be a denomination-ist without being a Christian. Simply attending a certain church building on a regular basis and agreeing to become a member can make one some kind of 'ic, 'ist, 'an, or even an 'al, like a Pentacostal or Evangelical. It's easy to be one of those, no one has to surrender to anyone to pick up those labels. Becoming a Christ-one though, that's a different story. The Christ, Jesus, will not take second place in our lives. He is Lord. We surrender our lives to Him and He sends His own Holy Spirit to dwell in us. Any of us can become a member of a denomination or church by simply saying "Okay". But to become a Christian, we must first accept Jesus as Lord.
The problem mentioned earlier comes when Christians forget to be Christians first. We might want to remember to answer the question of where we attend services with: I am a Christian and I attend this church. We might introduce a friend as: "This is John, he's a Presbyterian." The better way would be to introduce John by putting his faith in Christ first, "This is John; He is a Christian and attends the Presbyterian church." Perhaps we can even get to the point where we are happy to make the introduction, "This is Burt, my brother in Christ!" The denomination or church Burt attends can be, pardon the pun, attended to later. The answer might also be found by asking yourself: what do you want to be known as? Try this, pretend you are being introduced to God before His throne. Would you want Jesus to introduce you as a Protestant or Catholic? I'm thinking that all of us would want our Lord to introduce us as one of His own, a Christ-one!
Bucky
No comments:
Post a Comment