Jesus, Jesus

These past few weeks, I've run into more and more people that once where Christians, but have since "left the faith" or are "running away from God."

"Jesus hurt me."

"God wasn't there."

"How could he let this happen to me?"

There are millions of people struggling through what it means to believe in God, or what it looks like to have relationship with Him. They question His goodness and mercy through the existence of death, disease, poverty and war in this world.

Those things are out of our hands. As sons and daughters of the most high King, we know we must trust Him through it all, however hard it may be.

But there are other reasons for people turning away from God:

heartbreak.

abuse.

broken trust.

These are things we CAN control.

When someone tells me they have turned away from God, in the back of my mind I want to ask, "Who hurt you? Who was it that claimed they loved Jesus, and then turned around and broke your heart?"

I know this is not always the case. This pain does not always come from someone in the church and I realize a lot of pain stems from the examples I first listed, but we, as lovers of Jesus, should not be a source for it.

Way too many of God's children have been hurt by others' misrepresentations of Jesus.

"But if you give them a hard time, bullying or taking advantage of their simple trust, you'll soon wish you hadn't. You'd be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a millstone around your neck. Doom to the world for giving these God-believing children a hard time" - Matthew 18:6

We, as lovers of Jesus, as purveyors of His love and grace and peace and joy, are held to a higher standard by others. In turn, we should hold ourselves to an even higher standard.

Christ lives in us. Our lives should be physical embodiments of Him and what He represents.

Anything short of that is a diservice to those of this world that need Him the most.

We don't need more Christians. We have plenty of those.

What we need are more passionate lovers of Christ, who actually live out the values of love, peace, joy and forgiveness that we so easily preach about on Sundays.

Just something to think about. Let it challenge you or speak to you as it will.

much love Sons and Daughters