Why does Christianity fail? Maybe it’s not failing, but we are?
Sometimes when you become a faithful follower of Christ, the people you thought were your friends, well, they disappear. They say you’re different, and you’re no fun, you’ve become ‘religious’. Or maybe they think you’re going to try and convert them.
Here’s what I have to say about that: #1 if your friends are living wild but certainly not free, they’re fed up really with their lifestyle (like maybe you were or I was at one time) they can choose to change it just like you and I did. Your story can help them make a better choice.
Spending time getting to know Jesus and allowing the words of the Bible to penetrate your heart helps a lot with that. This is why when we ‘wild children’ get to know how important we really are to God, we begin to experience a spiritual freedom that never came from sex, drugs, money or alcohol.
Pretty soon, if you’ll hang in there, you’ll realize you were made for something way more. You matter and your story matters.
IT’S REALLY NOT OUR JOB TO CONVERT ANYONE, IT’S OUR JOB TO LOVE PEOPLE EXACTLY AS THEY ARE AND LIVE A LIFE BEFORE THEM THAT OFFERS THEM HOPE AND SHOWS THEM THE POWER OF CHRIST.
If you’ve been rescued from a life of endless partying and addiction, of course you want your friends to know. It’s easy to be overzealous when we experience freedom from something that has held us back and caused us a lot of grief.
#2 Try and remember we have no power to save, we only have the power of our story.
#3 People are pretty confused about this whole ‘religious’ thing because mostly people don’t have a healthy context for the box of Christianity.
In my experience, this goes for people inside and out of the church.
Jesus himself fought against the religious zealots of his day, he called them vipers, in fact. Why? Because he could see into their hearts and motives and they were misleading and stealing from the people who were desperately seeking for spiritual guidance. He knew they were fake and they were more interested in controlling the people than leading the people to God. They were interested in looking good and holy, but not ‘being’ good or holy.
Only God knows the motives of our heart.
PEOPLE WHO ARE RELIGIOUS ARE OFTEN CONDEMNING AND SELF RIGHTEOUS AND THOSE CHARACTER FLAWS PUSH PEOPLE FURTHER AWAY RATHER THAN OFFER HOPE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE HURTING, LONELY OR NEED HEALING.
If you will allow yourself to go to a deeper place of spiritual surrender with God, you will experience a more peaceful life and a lot more wisdom on how to walk out the Christian faith.
We overcome this world and all its pain in part by the power of our testimony so keep it real and not religious. People seeking religion rather than relationship are trading a deeply spiritual experience for one that will only feed our ego. It’s just more of the same in a different box and has no lasting value or significance.
People are seeking answers for life’s toughest questions and for the most part humanity wants to know WHO created us and WHY?
It’s not always easy to answer those questions, but we can share our experiences and we have the power to create better conversations.
True Christianity is full of love, hope, grace, healing and the power to set the captives free. Your story is worth telling and trust me, someone is waiting desperately to hear it.
The reason why Christianity fails is because we fail to have courage to share our intimate story. We hold back sharing real Christianity and the journey of life as we discover the desires of God’s heart.
Truly, there is no sex, drugs, alcohol, knowledge or amount of money that compares to the love of God. You know it, I know it and God certainly knows it . . .go share it, passionately, authentically, no holds.
And . . . some will hate you, some will disregard you, some will bash you and some will judge you, but at least you’re keepin’ your journey real and it’s hard to dishonor that.
