Tuesday, January 18

follow.

So let me just go ahead and make the proclamation... I'm fairly certain that I'm not going to be blogging about anything besides faith anymore. If you read my blog from the beginning you can see quite a journey over the last several months. A few months ago I wrote a post about my struggle with faith. I readily admitted that I felt weird writing about being a Christian and that I didn't have the authority to say anything of worth. I used to know a lot about being a Christian when I was a kid, but it never really changed me too much. I just took information in and spit it back when I was supposed to. I recently heard it called spiritual bulimia. Kind of crass, but totally true. So, I all but deserted the Christian faith for a few years post college. Anyway, I've gone over that story in a recent blog, so I'll skip the details. Suffice to say that over the last few months I wanted to find my way back to Christianity. I realized that I was missing something, but it wasn't that old excuse for faith that people presented me when I was a kid. I always felt guilty because I wanted something besides my religion. I thought is was a guy, a drink, a paycheck. Tried that and I was wrong. Turns out the whole time I was being suffocated by Christiainity and what I wanted was GOD. All the STUFF (meetings, trips, do's and don'ts, christian politics, and just CHURCH in general) of Christianity clogged up my mind and heart to the point that I never really got GOD. So, anyway, here's the thing I just realized. I've been a BELIEVER for a long time, but I just became a FOLLOWER.

I want to say a LOT more about this, but I'm still figuring it out myself. Here are a few related thoughts I'm currently chewing on... most are a combination from sermons I've heard recently at Elevation, stuff I've read in my own personal Bible study (I read Matthew today), and my current pleasure reading 'Irresistible Revolution' by Shane Claiborne.


- What I am > what I do. Therefore I am striving to not worry about what I am going to do, but who I am going to become. I want to be someone who loves God and loves people.

- Love God. Love people. Follow Jesus. Thats really all there is, so I am striving to stop worrying about anything that's not in direct relation to those things.

- Being passive is just as bad as being violent. TAKE ACTION.

- We can worship Jesus without following him. We can adore his cross without taking up ours... But that's not something I'm interested in.

- Sometimes Christian 'stuff' makes so much noise that people can't hear our words. That's not acceptable for me. If something I do makes it harder to hear Jesus, then its gotta go.

- Following Jesus is simple, but not easy.

- We should start out by serving others, but move toward a relationship with those people.

- Everyone in the body of Christ is important. We need to get planted in the local body and EMBRACE OUR PLACE.

- There shouldn't even be a plural form of the word church... there's only ONE body of believers.

- Conversion is a process, not a one time event

- 'There is enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed.' -Gandhi

- 'We are called to be the Good Samaritan, but after you life so many people out of the ditch, you start to ask, maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be repaved.' Martin Luther King Jr.


I know all of this didn't exactly 'flow'.... but hope you found at least one piece thought provoking. =)

2 comments:

  1. the comment ""Being passive is just as bad as being violent. TAKE ACTION" takes me to the book im reading TOny Nolans Hurt Healer> in it he says very much that same sentiment"to not help is to hurt">>in hi sbook he makes refernece to the story of the Levite who helped the man who had been beaten by thieves and how others walked by this beaten man,anywhoo.....great insight steph

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  2. my bad i meant the samaritan not the levites

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