There's a lot on my mind and this blog doesn't even begin to cover it.. but it seems like an easy lead-in to talk about "Christians". Why? because they're an easy target, I guess. (I feel that I can say this freely because I am one.) Growing up in the church, I've noticed that there are two types of Christians. There are Christians who are perfect. They live seemingly perfect lives and nothing ever goes wrong.. of course, if something were to go wrong, they would tell you that they are better because of it and all glory to God, etc. It also seems that they never sin and they know the words to every new worship song that no one else has ever heard before. They have the bible memorized and would never consider missing a service. I love these people. Really I do. But I confess, I am not one of them. I'm more of the other type of Christian...
What I mean by that is, we're human.. we struggle.. we suffer.. and sometimes our faith suffers too. I think that praising God in every situation is great, but if we're honest.. most of us would admit that we rarely do this. We have our ups and downs, our good days and our bad days.. and we have days when we just don't feel like going to church, or talking about our faith, or singing worship songs..
For this reason I say it's important to have Christian friends... and I could really write a whole blog about that.. if I wanted to.. which I don't. Maybe some other day.
What I'm really thinking is this..
I've had a few conversations recently with other Christians.. ones who are struggling with different aspects of life. I've been short on words.. even though I could say a lot.. nothing has seemed quite right. Today, however, I realized something.. or it actually, finally sank in.. I found myself asking this question: Is bringing glory to God my purpose for living, or is it more of a guideline that I live next to?
What I mean is this.. It seems that in almost every conversation I have with Christians trying to deal with different issues the question always seems to be something along the lines of, "Is God okay with this?" or "Is this a sin?" Both are good questions and I believe they're helpful for staying on the 'straight & narrow'... but it seems to me that most of the time when we ask this, we actually know the answer. So I have a better question.. What if we started weighing our decisions according to how well we could glorify God in each situation? Maybe instead our question would be, "Can I grow in my relationship with God and bring him the glory if I do this?" (Whatever "this" is.. it obviously varies)
In essence what I'm saying is, what if we stopped trying to push the boundaries? Stopped trying to see just how far we can go and still be "ok" and "sin-free"?
When I say that bringing glory to God can be a guideline that we live next to, I mean exactly that. It gets set aside as the boundary line between "ok" and "not ok". It's no longer our purpose, but just something that we measure things against to make sure we're not sinning. I'd give examples, but this blog is long enough. Those are my thoughts... talk to me.
Cheers
-E
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