Be the light....

Pastor Josh posted a statistic the other day about how something like 97% of people who consider themselves to be Evangelical Christians have never shared their faith with someone. This completely blows my mind. We were not called to come together as a church so we could eat, hang out, and sit mindlessly through a 30 minute lecture weekly so we could just go on living the exact same mundane life that we started with.

Living out our faith should feel like we are living on the edge. Today Pastor Josh spoke on Jesus being the life-ring, "the ring is the thing". I feel like so many of us are just sunbathing while the rest of the world is drowning just outside our reach. All it takes is a little step of faith to completely change someones life.

I feel like people are so caught up in "sunbathing", too focused on our own personal agendas to see the big picture. Too much time focused on trying to legislate beliefs on non-believers as if making it a law is going to "save" someone. If only people would spend less time posting ridiculous hurtful comments, sarcastic arguments, and judgmental displays of character and spent more time sharing the love of Jesus Christ, we'd actually be gaining people for the Kingdom of God and not turning people away by the thousands.

My prayer is that I would step up and actually be the light that we are called to be. My fault is that I am extremely shy and socially awkward in conversation, even about normal every day things. I get conversation anxiety or something. So when talking about things I have an emotional tie to, I pretty much shut down, sound stupid, and end up looking like an idiot. Happens all the time. Religious discussion, vegetarianism conversations, talking about serving the poor, political debate.... the list goes on. While I feel very passionate about all of this...I can never seem to get out my feelings and I always sound stupid. So when trying to share my faith, I have been successful only a few times, and only by the grace of God. Other times I can only hope that God has used me to plant a seed and that someday he will use someone else to finish the process. But my prayer again is that I would not let the fear of looking stupid keep me from tossing that life-ring to the drowning.

We need to show the TRUE Jesus, the one who came as a servant, to teach, to love, and give his life as the ultimate sacrifice for a LOST and depraved world. Do not make the mistake of thinking that Jesus is only for the righteous...I have yet to meet someone who can claim to be so. We are ALL broken!!! Some of us have been rescued, so instead of using our words and actions to force heads deeper into the water, lets use them to offer the hope of life in Christ! THE RING IS THE THING!