BE LIKE CHRIST

I took the weekend off of reading Crazy Love. I am really trying to use this book and the information with it to challenge myself in order to plunge into a deeper relationship with God. If you have been keeping up with the Crazy Love blogs, you will note the last challenge I felt tugging at my heart was to Witness and Be an Example of Jesus to everyone I come in contact with, as well as using every breath to HONOR AND WORSHIP Him! It is late Sunday night, and I am reflecting back on the weekend and the challenges of this challenge. Being like Jesus.....until today, while I was talking with a friend about being a new Christian and wanting to be Christ-like, I thought that I had failed this challenge. I havent gone into the streets screaming scriptures to people passing by. I havent stood up in front of a church to confess my sins or give a testimony. I havent done alot of the blatent attempts some religious people would consider "witnessing"....but talking to this friend today, I noticed him staring at me like he'd never seen me before (weve known each other since I was in middle school mind you). I said "what are you looking at? You look like youve never seen me before." He said "I havent seen THIS you before...Its very nice to see" All he could do was smile. When I got to the source of his weirdness (ha!) it turns out that he had never heard me talk about God before. Never seen my face light up when I talked about loving Christ and Christ loving us. See, we were talking about his nicotine addiction and I was explaining to him how whatever we used substances, and people, and relationships, and all other worldly things for-whatever void we are using them to fill-that God wants to FILL it. He wants us to rely on Him to do those things. Since we had never talked about God and such like he said, I wasnt sure how he'd react and I almost witheld (but once Im on a roll Im pretty impossible to shut up :)) He wasnt mad at all. He was...speechless for lack of a beter word. When I left him I wondered if I word-vomitted Christ on people like that often so I started reflecting back over the weekend. I reflected not on times I beat people over the head with the Bible...but instead, just genuinely loved people as Christ would. To my surprise, I didnt miserably fail the challenge I had set before me. Sure we can ALWAYS do more. Our grandest gestures and greatest deeds are nothing but dirty rags before God so yes I can ALWAYS do more. But I learned a different lesson instead...You cant measure Christianity or your salvation or the depth of your relationship with God on how many times you read scripture to someone (check), how many mission trips youve been on (check), how much money you give in the offering (check)...instead we as Christians should be LOVING people. Loving to the ends of our fingertips, as Christ would have us love one another and non-believers too. So much more can be said with pure love than all other modes of message transportation.

The second part of my challenge (which i DID fail miserably) was to honor and glorify God with every breath I take, every thought I think, every action I commit to. My "excuses" were not feeling well, very busy, etc etc. We are not giving our everything to God if we only give him "everything" when it's most convenient for us. I failed miserably. But will try, and try again. Im not scared to admit my failures to my 3 followers and possible readers in cyberland. Learning from our mistakes and failures is how we GROW. I want to expand my faith beyond my wildest imagination. I want to fall so hard in Love with God it will be impossible for ANYONE to compete with my heart afterwards. I truly want to better myself and the lives of everyone who come into contact with me. I may read chapter 3 tomorrow of Crazy Love, either way my continuing challenge will be what I failed so horribly at this weekend "to truly Glorify God with every word I say, every thought I think, every breath I take"

I am human, and I will make mistakes. And I will fall and fail a billion times before I ever get it close to right. But knowing that God forgives me when I stumble and offers Grace to pull me back up...is FAITH