I love it when the first verse you read in your daily Bible reading is this awesome.
In case you are wondering, this year I’m following the Youversion.com yearly Bible reading plan. It takes you through Old and New together and you end up reading the Old Testament once and the New Testament Twice. Also this year, I’ve decided to read the Message Paraphrase for the whole year (first time for me). It’s been awesome to read the Bible in a fresh light (even from a Paraphrase).
Well, here in mid June I’ve been in James. This morning’s first verse was from chapter two and the Message version reads:
James 2:1 “My dear friends, don’t let public opinion influence how you live out our glorious, Christ-originated faith.”
Now James goes on to tell us not to treat “well dressed” people better than “poorly dressed” people. But I just loved this FIRST verse so much I had to blog on it. Don’t let public opinion influence how you live out your GLORIOUS, Christ-originated faith!
Awesome.
Heart Check:
Are you doing that? Are you scared to go after who God is and what He’s making you to be because you are afraid of what people think?
Are you living the kind of a “acceptable” Christian life that others will accept and admire instead of truly being what God has called you to be?
Let scripture remind you as it did me this morning. WHO CARES WHAT THEY THINK – FOLLOW CHRIST!
If people like it – great!
If people hate it – maybe it’s better that way . . .
You see, over the past few months there has been a lot of news coverage about the fall of Christianity in America. How the numbers of believers are down and the numbers of Atheists are up. And do you want my honest opinion? I think that those numbers mean zilch!
Look at God’s track record when the “number” of His followers were low:
If God has ONE MAN – He can lead 600,000 Hebrew slaves out of Egypt. He can annihilate 450 prophets of Baal, He can kill a defiant and arrogant Goliath, He can redeem mankind from sin, He can end slavery and segregation, He can preach the gospel on every Continent (thank you Billy Graham).
And maybe the number of professing Christians is down because all the “pretenders” finally got honest instead of faking belief for the sake of appearances. And if that’s the case – it’s about time!
God is looking for ONE MAN, ONE WOMAN, or ONE TEENAGER who will not give ONE CARE to popular opinion but will have ONE heart for Him that may just bring radical change to ONE nation that still exists under ONE God.
Okay, I’m ready to get to work.
Onward!
PT
