A Billboard For Christ
When I don’t know what to do, I write.
Satan has been attacking me. But I can’t show it, I can’t let my guard down. Last week I spoke on “How To Be Relationally Fit.” But lately, I have felt anything but relationally fit. The seven days before I spoke were almost all strike outs in the relational department. It’s only been slightly better since.
I try to live my life to do the right thing. To please everyone. To make sure everyone feels good. Loved. Included. Apart. Involved. Cared about. Respected. I just want everyone to feel the way I wish I felt my entire life. I feel like I try so hard that it’s like I end up failing because of it.
Tonight, a woman approached my table of 7th grade girls asking about the book I was teaching from. She walked away in tears from telling my girls how important the Gospel is and how we need to take it serious because her husband had just attended the funeral of someone who they aren’t sure they will see in Heaven one day. Her point was so clear, The Bible is the most important thing we will ever learn.
I have friends who I am not sure I will see in Heaven one day. Friends who have already passed and friends who have passed through seasons of my life. I know the urgency and the need to want to scream at everyone around you when you go through something like realizing someone you loved, someone you could have impacted more will spend eternity in Hell. But we have The Gospel, the urgency of the Gospel alone needs to make us scream from the rooftops for everyone around us!
For 7th graders, this is a hard concept to grasp. My sweet girls walked away feeling criticized, judged and hurt that they were being accused of disrespecting me and disrespecting the Gospel.
Waking up without the Bible on my mind, without the Bible as my first thought, my first action to grab it, my first thought to read it is disrespecting the Gospel. When I don’t share the Gospel with the man on the street, the woman in the grocery store, the teen addicted to drugs, the people who are different from us, the people who are similar to us in fear that I might offend them.. We are offending the Gospel by not shouting it from the rooftops.
Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. People are dying all across the world to have the Bible, to sit in a Bible study, to be in church, to tell others about Jesus. And we are sitting in a restaurant cutting up while others watch us disrespect each other and The Gospel. Living out the complete opposite of what the Bible says. Treating others the complete opposite of how Jesus treated others.. Gossiping, slandering, bickering, teasing, cussing.. the list goes on and on of how humans treat humans. Why would anyone want to follow Jesus by watching the way we live?
THIS IS NOT HOW WE’RE CALLED TO LIVE
We are being watching. The world is waiting, watching, craving for us to fall, mess up, disrespect and flaw the Bible. We are walking billboards for Jesus Christ. We display His Message.. loud and clear or musty and faded. We choose how others see Jesus through us. I never imagined a woman from out of town was listening and watching my Bible study every week. I can only think about what if I were to mistreat my girls and someone would hear me say one thing and act another way.. my witness would be blown. “from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way.” James 3:10
Just as our mouths should not have both blessing and cursing, our lives must not either. We must live every breath, every move, every action to Glorify Christ, to grow closer to Him and to want others to know Him as their Lord and Savior. Everything beside that is just not worth it.
If you are a Christian, you represent Jesus Christ.
How are you choosing to represent Him?
People are watching. People are waiting.