I am a proud child of God.
I try to stay away from saying my “religion” is Christianity - there two reasons for this:
1) I don’t believe in religion - as soon as you mention religion people think rules, going to church every Sunday, reading your Bible and saying prayers at appropriate times. In that case I’m not a “good little Christian girl”. I don’t read my Bible every day, I don’t go to church every Sunday and I pray constantly throughout the day, not just at meal times or before I go to bed.
2) There is a lot of negativity connected to the word Christian. When people hear Christian they think about someone close-minded, judgemental... I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. And it’s true - there are a lot of people out there that believe that God exists and so they call themselves Christian, but that’s not what it’s about is it....
I love being a child of God because it’s always different. I’m constantly being challenged to be better, be different, live by higher standards. I love it when people point out the parts of my character that they think are lacking because it means I have another opportunity to say “Lord, help me to change.”
I’ve come to know the Father heart of God, which means that I live in relationship with my Creator. I don’t wake up feeling guilty if I fell asleep during prayer the night before, I don’t feel guilty if I have a glass of wine (or two) when I’m out with my friends and I don’t feel guilty when I haven’t been to church in a while. But I do feel guilty when I realize at the end of the day that I haven’t even stopped once to say “Thank Lord for...” or “How are you today Father?”
Just like any relationship needs communication to stay alive I need to speak to my Daddy, and the best thing is - He speaks back!
I wish I had words to describe the awesome high I’m on ALL THE TIME! I’m so full of emotion that I sometimes wonder what to do with myself!
Ok - I’m babbeling on and losing the point here...
People need to realize that if you’re gonna say you’re Christian - COMMIT TO IT! Lay your life before God and decided to live according to His will. Don’t go about swearing, drinking, smoking and treating people like they’re lower than dirt (and please note that when I talk about drinking I’m not talking about having a beer or a glass of wine, I’m talking about drinking so much that you lose control) and then still telling people you’re a Christian. That’s just called being a HYPOCRITE!
In his book Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell says the following: “Very few people in our world are offering anything worth dying for. Most of the messages we receive are about how to make life easier. The call of Jesus goes the other direction: It’s about making our lives more difficult. It is going out of our way to be more generous and disciplined and loving and free. It is refusing to escape and become numb to and check out of this broken, fractured world.”
And that’s what it’s all about - not removing ourselves from the world because we’re “holier” than they are, but becoming so involved in making a difference, feeling all the emotions that the pain and beauty in this world make us feel, listening and caring about what people have to say. Not running away from it because we want something easier, but rather running toward it because we want a challenge; we want to see if we have what it takes. And with every small step of faith we take, we learn that with God leading the way, we can make a difference.
Being a Christian is about becoming more Christ-like day by day.
And if that’s not your goal - please stop lying to people.
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