I am tired.
I'm tired of salvation calls being "close your eyes and bow your head, now raise your hand if you want to accept Jesus and no one will see you." Someone choosing to accept Christ should NEVER be something kept secret. We should be celebrating and cheering with shouts of joy so loud Heaven can hear us celebrating alongside the angels. And the fact that we don't do that breaks my heart. It is the thing most worth celebrating on this whole earth. When did believing Christ become something we do behind doors. We are called to live fearlessly and boldly for Christ and if you can't stand up and declare you are choosing to believe in Christ, are you really capturing the heart of the Father for you? Because He surely doesn't call you to live in fear.
I'm tired of people calling them Christians and so badly wounding others with their fake, unrealistic, hypocritical faith, leaving that person scarred to Christianity forever. And on behalf of us, I am so sorry and I ask your forgiveness for the wounded Christian who hurt you out of their own brokenness. That hypocrisy or judgement is not how God has intended us to live, but we don't always get it right. And it sucks that that causes so much hurt in our world today. Christians need to get off our high horse and accept that we aren't any better or any more loved than the murderer or the rapist or the sex trafficker. Because on the list of people Jesus died for is the Christian, the murderer, the rapist, the sex trafficker, and billions of other people He loves. Let's stand up and break the stigma of Christians being hypocritical and judgmental people by living in love and forgiveness just as Jesus does for us.
I'm tired of people twisting the Bible to fit their desires. The Bible says what the Bible says. If it says something is wrong, it is wrong. If it says don't do something, don't do it. People try so hard to make God fit into their life when in reality our life should fit into God. We live in a world where people look at the Bible through the world and not the world through the Bible. Read that again. Stop it. Stop living your life and meeting God's standards when it is easy and fits your schedule. If you believe Christianity is supposed to help you live a perfect, cookie cutter, easy life, ask Jesus if dying on the cross was that. Because I can assure you it was not. He died, defeating the gates of hell and taking the keys, so that we can claim that victory, "On earth as it is in Heaven." But that requires us actually going to war against the present powers of darkness on this earth and you want to know something, war sometimes involves pain and heartache and struggles and difficulty but it doesn't mean we are any less loved or any less conquerors. So read your dang Bible. And fight to live it. I know it isn't easy but I don't remember God ever saying it would be. But I do remember Him saying that if we really try with everything in us, He will help us.
I'm tired of believers believing every single thing they read on the internet and forming their opinions based on surface level information. I'm tired of Christians saying homosexuality is okay and not taking a stance on it. I'm tired of people who say they love Christ but stand by abortion that allows His creation to be murdered before they even have a chance to breathe their own breath. I'm tired of Christians sitting silently while racism is overcoming love in our everyday lives, right in our own neighborhoods. Freaking get off your butt and stand up for what is right. We live in a society where Christians so selfishly live their perfect Christian lives, only focused on what affects them, focusing only on making sure they're seen as the perfect, "loving", peaceable Christian. You wanna know the most loving thing we as Christians can do? Fight for love. Go to war for the Lord. Tell people of what the love of Christ really is and stand up for those who can't. Stop being a peacekeeper of your own life and be a peacemaker in this peaceless world we live in.
I am tired of people calling themselves followers of Christ and hating, slandering, bashing, criticizing and being straight up rude to others for different beliefs and other mistakes. This time of year with the election makes it ten times worse. Let me ask you this? Have you ever made a mistake? Yes, because you are human. And you know who else is human? Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And people have the audacity and think it's their place to point out every single mistake they have made and call them rude, disrespectful names they themselves would never ever want to be called. You know the story of the adulterous woman that they dragged out to the street to be stoned? What did Jesus say? He said, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And what did all those people do? One by one they dropped their stones and walked away because they knew they had sin issues in their life. So you know what, I give you permission to go back to dragging people's names through the mud and calling out others faults and flaws on Facebook and Instagram as soon as you can show me you've dealt with your own and are now sinless and perfect. Drop your stones and walk away. Stoning someone on social media is absolutely not how any person who says they love Jesus should behave. EVER. I'm serious. Am I saying don't share your opinion or respectfully disagree with someone. No. But Heaven knows that's not what most people do. Most people feel the need to share their opinion and then tear down the other person to make them feel stupid, worthless, and foolish. In the world we live in, in the midst of a pandemic and sex trafficking and addiction running rampant and so much evil, the last thing we need is to be ripping each other to shreds on the internet. Show some love, some compassion, some forgiveness, some grace, and some mercy because we all should know God shows us all of those very single waking and sleeping moment of our sinful life. Read 1 Corinthians 13 in the Passion Translation and then ask yourself, "Do my comments and posts on social media line up with a 1 Corinthians 13 love?"
So many of these issues come from us getting off track of what the Bible says and the Character of who God is. The Body of Christ needs to take a real bigger inner look and evaluate where we have so badly messed up our views of what a Christian life should look like, according to the Word of God. I think our biggest issue we have is losing sight of what true gospel living is, what true repentance and forgiveness is, what true love is, what true grace and mercy is.
We should be bold. We should fearlessly proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth. We should love unconditionally. We should forgive a million times. We should radiate grace and mercy. We should be constantly building people up. We should be patient, compassionate, and joyful. We should stand up for what we believe. We should be there for the widows and the orphans. We should be living truth. We should be healing the sick and casting out all evil from our life and the world around us. We should be helping Heaven itself come to earth. We should be getting on our knees and pursuing the One who never stops pursuing us. We should be praising without a hesitation in our heart. We should be surrendering our hearts to the Father.
And with each of those things I listed, I am choosing today, right here and now, to actually live those things in my life and to pursue the genuine, unfiltered truth that the Lord calls us to believe and follow. If you're with me and want today to be the furthest you've ever been from God, ask the Lord: "What changes you need to make in your life to start living a life centered around God's heart and not your own?"